


Points of Light

by cotton_prima



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Adoption, Daddy Issues, Intergenerational Trauma, M/M, Torture, descriptions of violence, dubious parenting decisions, hurt with varying amounts of comfort, this fic was inspired by long conversations about the babyrealms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2019-10-05 16:52:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 38,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17328839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cotton_prima/pseuds/cotton_prima
Summary: Here they were, in the middle of a war, and invasion, having spilled plenty of blood between the two of them fighting on behalf of a kingdom that had produced more orphans than could be stomached, and Corrin was considering adoption.Set in Conquest.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to kobblublu for yelling about the babyrealms with me and reminding me that I was working on this fic. 
> 
> Go check out her twitter at @kobblublu.

Niles knew that, from an objective standpoint, he was pretty fucked up. Who wouldn’t fracture a little, with his history? If people called him crazy, he wouldn’t correct them.

But now, looking at Corrin and the two thin figures huddled against him, one in his arms and one at his hip, Niles worried for his husband’s sanity.

 “What do you have there, Corrin?” he asked. It was clear that Corrin was worn thin. He wore a blood-crusted scrape on his forehead, and his hair was dusted with ash. His poor, sweet man. Heroic and bloodied in the back allies of a city his father’s troops were burning. And yet Niles felt himself smiling—a terrible, sardonic smile.

“They’re children, Niles,” Corrin said. His voice sounded burnt.  “You’ve seen children before.”

Yes, Niles had seen children before. And most of them had been as raggedy as these two—sisters, as far as he could tell. Filthy and hungry as stray mutts. Tattered clothes, discolored skin, matted silver hair, and the older one was glaring at him with eyes from the puddles of his own youth.

Oh yes, Niles had seen children.

“Then I’m sure there’s an _excellent_ reason why those children are with you? To help rout the Hoshidans, perhaps?”

“Put your bow away, Niles. You’ll frighten them.”

Dread killed any innuendo Niles would have otherwise been tempted to make. Though notched, his bow was already lowered, and he’d bet good coin that it would take more than the sight of a weapon to frighten these girls. The older one had not stopped scowling at him, had not let him out of her sight. Smart girl. Meanwhile, the small one, hardly more than an infant, had tucked her face into Corrin’s chest as if it were completely natural.

“Tell me you’re not making a stupid decision.”

“They were about to be swept up by Hans’s men, Niles. I found them just in time, and I did what I had to do. But Kana’s foot is hurt, and—“

“Kana?”

“Kana…” Corrin said, and the small child looked up just long enough for Niles to see the flat sheen of her eyes. “…And Nina.” The scowling girl shrunk back behind Corrin. Wonderful.

“And their parents?”

The older girl’s eyes seemed to grow harder, and Corrin’s answer came hesitantly.

“They don’t have any.”

“Of course they don’t.”

“Niles…”

“No.”

“They can’t stay here.”

Niles couldn’t stifle a derisive laugh. How absurd! Here they were, in the middle of a war, and _invasion_ , having spilled plenty of blood between the two of them fighting on behalf of a kingdom that had produced more orphans than could be stomached, and Corrin was considering _adoption_. He literally held an infant with bloodstained hands while thinking he could save her! And Niles loved him, loved him more than his own life. But he was an idiot. And if Niles didn’t laugh at that idiocy, it would make him sick.

But Corrin did not falter. If his husband’s scorn hurt him, or touched upon any of his own doubts, he didn’t show it. His face was forged nobleness, and he held his perfectly upright posture.

“What would you have me do?” Corrin asked. His voice was a flat calm. Niles stood firm against it and answered in kind.

“I’d have you do the only sane thing. Leave them.”

“To what?” Corrin scoffed. “Nestra won’t be neutral after tonight. Are you telling me to let the war take them like it’s bound to take this city?”

Yes, Niles wanted to say. Corrin was brave and strong. But he couldn't stop what had already begun any more than one man could stand against an avalanche. But he would try. He would try, and it would wreck them both.

“You can’t afford to salvage every sob story that waltzes across your path. So you picked out two kids from the gutter. In a city like this, I can guarantee there’s a thousand more just like them. Will you save them as well?”

“If I had the strength to, I would,” Corrin said. For a moment he seemed to bend under the weight of the world. But just for a moment. “I know I can’t. But I _can_ help these girls.”

“And what do you want, a pat on the back?” It was a rash response, but Niles couldn’t help it. An itch was crawling through his chest. Crawling with sharp claws. Wanting to wound.

“I just want them to be safe.”

All over again, he hated his honesty, his innocence.

“They sure as hell won’t be safe with us.”

“They’d be safer than if they stayed here.”

“You can’t control that.”

“We could try.”

“Yes, and I’m sure you’d give it your _best_.”

“I thought you would understand.”

At that moment Niles could have punched him. He could have broken the whole fucking tragedy of his life over Corrin’s beautiful face. Instead, his smile widened.

“Understand? Well, _milord_ , a former urchin like myself might be able to recall what life was like on the streets, but surely you overestimate my ability to understand the noble subtleties of your logic.”

“Niles.”

Corrin’s voice had gone to softness, but it was too little too late. There it was. Guilt. Pity. Everything Niles hated to see aimed at him, and yet he couldn’t stop himself.

“What could scum like myself even say to a prince like you? And why would you care to listen? Does it amuse you to hear the gutter run its mouth?”

“Niles, I didn’t mean—”

“After all, people like us aren’t meant to have anything to do with each other.”

For the first time in their conversation, Niles had completely disarmed his husband. There should have been a perverse satisfaction to that, but there was only Corrin, standing quiet with the girls and looking at him as if he were a stranger. The sound of distant shouting filled the void left by their argument—a thin clamor of horse hooves and collapse. The eventual sound of Corrin’s voice was no less sobering.

“I’m going to regroup with Xander.”

Ah, so this was how Corrin looked when he’d hurt him. What a beautiful sadness, tender as a trampled lily. Niles had spent months trying to tease out this reaction. Now that he had, he felt too bruised to possibly enjoy it. What a shame, he thought, as Corrin passed him. The older girl (was her name Nina?) cast one last spiteful look at him.

He did not turn to watch his husband leave him. Ever since he’d realized his love for Corrin, Niles had feared this exact moment. He feared it, yet he felt its inevitability as distinctly as the turning of the seasons. The children were a surprise, but in the end, how it happened didn’t matter. It had happened. He had taken the one good thing in his life and ruined it.

Standing in the shadows of some nameless street, Niles listened to Corrin’s footsteps fade into the sounds of war.  



	2. Chapter 2

Three days of waking to an empty bed was enough for Corrin to seek refuge and peace of mind in the castle gardens. It was Camilla who swore by the therapeutic effects of roses, although in strolling among the bushes, Corrin doubted her wisdom. Nohrian rose bushes were known for their ability to grow in hard soil and with little light. But even in the plentiful light of the Astral Plane, the bushes yielded mostly thorns.

Corrin and Niles hadn’t spoken since Nestra. Corrin was busy planning the invasion of Hoshido with Xander and Leo, as well as rushing off to secret meetings with Azura to plan Garon’s overthrow. He may not have spent time with his husband in the past three days, but he hadn’t had time for a decent meal either.

And then there was supervising the children’s care and helping them adjust to their new surroundings. Kana’s foot was healing, and she’d warmed up to him quickly. But she and her sister were still skittish and practically mute around other people. Felicia had informed him that, in his absence, they would often hide from the servants, or refuse to make eye contact. But she also noted that the girls had calmed down quite a bit since they’d first arrived at the castle, and that they would sometimes ask about Corrin if they were feeling talkative. He wasn’t sure if this was true, or if Felicia was exaggerating her report to make him feel better about fighting with his husband.

Fighting? The notion arrested his other thoughts. Corrin paused and looked out over the rose bushes in distraction. Were they really fighting then? They’d disagreed before, and they had certainly stepped on each other’s toes more than a few times. But they hadn’t _fought_.

So, Corrin thought as the heavy scent of plants and earth settled over him, this was what their fights brought—silence and neglect. If they were really fighting, that was.

Were they fighting?

But what else would cause his husband to renounce their bed for three nights? Surely Niles must be feeling unsatisfied by now—but no. These were selfish thoughts. There were more important matters to attend to than his marital spat, Corrin reminded himself. As he spent his time strolling through gardens, lives were being lost, among them children like Kana and Nina. He hadn’t time for rest, nor the luxury of wanting sugar-spun happiness while his war starved others of bread.

Pain seized his right foot. Corrin yelped, then swore. He knew without looking that a thorn had lodged deep into his foot. He hobbled to a stone bench just off the garden path, then lifted his foot over his knee to get a good look at the wound. The thorn was obscured by a smear of blood, which he did his best to wipe away with his thumb. The thorn sank deeper into his foot, and he swore again.

“This is why we tell you to wear proper shoes.”

Corrin looked up to see Leo approaching. Their eyes met, and for a second his brother seemed to recoil before joining him on the bench. He glanced at Corrin’s foot and shook his head.

“You’ll have to see a healer about that. You’ll do no good just prodding at it.”

“I could just cut it off,” Corrin muttered darkly.

Leo sighed at Corrin’s dramatics and swatted away a gnat that had flown too close to his face. Corrin watched the insect tumble away and wondered at his sudden irritability. In the years spent secluded in the Northern Fortress, he’d longed for his siblings’ companionship more than anything, and he had enjoyed teasing and doting on his younger brother in equal measure. But right now, Leo’s closeness brought him more discomfort than the thorn lodged in his foot. Why was that? Was it because he was fighting with Niles? (Were they fighting?)

Leo cleared his throat and turned to him in a manner so diplomatic that Corrin might have laughed. Instead, he felt another pang of annoyance toward his brother.

“I hear you’ve been having difficulties with Niles?”

“Did he send you to talk to me?” Corrin asked. Leo’s brow furrowed in full offense.

“Niles is _my_ retainer, not the other way around,” Leo said, and Corrin instantly regretted his harshness. He ran his unbloodied fingers over his face.

“I’m sorry, Leo. You shouldn’t have to be dragged into this.”

“A little late for that. Like I said, Niles is my retainer. And you _married_ him.”

“I know,” Corrin groaned. “And I’m making a fine mess of it, aren’t I? No, I’m sorry, please don’t answer that.”

Leo shifted in his seat and made it a point to focus his attention on a particularly uninteresting corner of the rose garden.

“You haven’t spoken to him in three days.”

Corrin nodded. A perfect drop of blood like the spotless back of a ladybug had bubbled up around the thorn. For such a small wound, it bled quite a bit.

“He said that we weren’t supposed to have anything to do with each other.”

He didn’t know why he told Leo that. Over the past three days, Corrin hadn’t given that comment much thought. Yes, it had hurt at the time, and it had put an end to their encounter, but he’d walked away and that was that. But now that the words had been remade in his mouth, he felt sick. He felt like a thousand thorns. But he would not cry in front of Leo, and he didn’t. The feeling passed, and Leo was still staring out over the garden. He hadn’t even noticed.

But why wasn’t Leo saying anything? Common sympathy demanded that he deny what Niles had said. That he hadn’t really meant that, or wasn’t it all just a big misunderstanding? But Leo said none of that.

“He has a point,” is what Leo said instead.

“Leo…”

“He does. Like it or not, class exists. We are princes, so perhaps we’re allowed to forget sometimes. But Niles has lived under those distinctions his whole life, and they almost killed him. Worse, they made him want death. So if Niles said that you and he weren’t meant to so much as cross paths, he’s absolutely right. You ought to despise him, and he ought to resent you.” Leo paused to heave a long, frowning sigh. “And you _married_ him,” he said for the second time, nearly as unbelieving as the first. “You fell for a man fathoms below your station, and you _married_ him.”

“If there’s something about our relationship you find objectionable—“

“Let me finish, Corrin.” Leo met his brother’s pained gaze, then looked away, his mouth pulled into an uneasy grimace. “What I’m trying to say is that you two made a choice that few others would dare conceive. And that’s all well and good. But you’re a fool if you think that loving him is the same as understanding him.”

Corrin shook his head.

“He wanted me to leave those children behind, Leo. It was completely in our power to help them.”

“‘Our’ power, or yours?”

“ _Ours_. He’s not powerless. Even if he once was, he’s not anymore. And he wanted me to do nothing.”

“Why?”

Corrin was caught off guard by Leo’s succinct question.

“Well…He said…”

What _had_ Niles actually said? Something about his inability to save all the world’s orphans, which was true, yes, but a poor argument—and in front of the girls! But what else? Well, he’d made it clear that he thought Corrin a fool, that he could hardly expect less from a pampered little princeling like himself. Was that it? No, surely there’d been more to their argument than that. At least, it felt like there had been when the pain was fresh. Had Niles actually explained himself? Had he even asked him to?

Leo stood and smoothed his clothes.

“I’m not here to tell you that he’s right,” he said. “But think on it. And once you have, please sort things out with Niles. He’s difficult enough when he’s not moping.”

Corrin watched his brother leave the garden, his foot still throbbing. He wasn’t sure if he’d liked Leo’s advice, but as usual, it was difficult to say that he was wrong. Corrin breathed deeply to settle his heart, then channeled the smallest amount of dragonic energy through his body—just enough to turn his hand into a talon. Before he could have second thoughts, Corrin dug his sharp nails into his foot and plucked the thorn out. After a moment of scorching hurt, the pain settled into a predictable throb.


	3. Chapter 3

The balcony was chilly at night, but Niles had slept in worse places. At least he could see the stars, which looked much closer in the Astral Plane than in Nohr. Brighter, too. Used to darkness though he was, he could have gazed at the stars forever.

Perhaps he would.

Three nights he’d spent away from Corrin. He’d gone without food for longer than that, and his memories of hunger were not old. He had crouched in closed doorways, chewing only on despair. After the initial pangs, he’d grow numb to his body’s needs for a little while. And while the numbness was not pleasant, it wasn’t pain.

This was not hunger, though he felt a similar numbness now. But Niles had lived nearly his whole life without Corrin. If he had to, he could do so again.

Presumably.

Whenever he felt his will weaken, he remembered that alley, that look of pity on Corrin’s face, and Niles knew that he could not stomach Corrin looking at him like that. He would rather go without.

From his perch, Niles saw a figure limping toward the barracks. The starlight hid nothing—it was Corrin. For a moment, Niles thought of making an escape. But what was the point in that? It would only prolong the inevitable, and after three days, Niles had had enough foreplay.

Corrin arrived at the balcony a few minutes later, carrying a folded blanket. His face was beautifully pinched with worry. Unsubtle, that husband of his. He was so easy to read that he may as well have been standing naked in front of him. Between the two of them, Niles was far more skilled at keeping his true intentions hidden. Better at skulking around in the dark.

“I thought you’d be cold,” Corrin said.

“And did you think you’d come warm me up?” Niles felt the barbs in his voice like a bad habit. Alright, so he wasn’t as subtle as he’d thought. But he wasn’t ready to let Corrin get close. Emotionally, at least. “You don’t need to wait for an invitation. Come, sit.”

After a moment’s pause, Corrin joined Niles on the floor. He unfolded the blanket and wrapped it around them. Their shoulders touched. How romantic.

“What happened there?” Niles asked, gesturing to Corrin’s bandaged foot.

“I stepped on a thorn.”

“This is why we—”

“Yes. Real shoes. I know.”

They lapsed into silence, both acutely aware of the tension between them and the heat radiating off each other’s bodies. How many times had they sat here gazing at the night sky, Niles wondered. How many months ago had he taught Corrin to name the stars? To see the tapestries woven between them? Corrin had been a keen student, though Niles had made a point of distracting him.

Now, Niles felt as if he and Corrin were trapped in a cruel parody of their courtship. At least the stars gave them something to look at that wasn’t each other. But when Niles tried to focus on a constellation, the stars seemed to scatter into incomprehensible arrangements. They crashed and hurtled away and into each other. They were all wrong.

“Sleep inside tonight,” Corrin finally said. His gaze remained fixed on the sky out of shyness or stubbornness or both. How could Niles not pluck such low-hanging fruit?

“Is that your way of asking me to sleep with you, your highness? In truth, I would have liked to return to our bed earlier, but I wanted to see how long it would take for you to come.”

Corrin turned. His face was open to Niles, and without pity.

“You’re right. I should have done this much sooner.”

He smiled, and, like a fool, Niles felt his heart clench. The numbness giving way to equal parts pain and pleasure. He knew very well that Corrin used his kindness to disarm. But knowing a trick didn’t stop Niles from falling for it, especially when that trick was genuine. Corrin wasn’t the one who, terrified that he’d shattered his marriage with a single sentence, had run away from home to preempt rejection. Of course Corrin had come for him. He had promised he wouldn’t leave Niles alone. Now that he was here, it was easy to believe that promise. But Niles hadn’t been certain until it had happened.

He was so glad it had happened.

“I will,” Niles said softly. “Since you asked so nicely.”

Niles let Corrin slot their fingers together. His hand, unlike Niles’s, was not cold. Corrin pressed his lips against the back of Niles’s hand. Almost a kiss.

Niles looked into Corrin’s eyes, two familiar points of light, and felt settled. Full.

Corrin led them back to their quarters, and Niles did not let go of his hand. There was much to say to each other, but not yet. They went in quiet and calm, the short path lit by starlight.

 

Falling into bed with his husband was admittedly a great comfort after sleeping on cold stones. Lying next to Corrin, Niles thought, as he often had during their marriage, that it had finally happened—he had gone soft. Metaphorically speaking.

“You must have felt rather pent-up,” Corrin murmured. They were looking into each other’s faces, but in the bedroom’s darkness, Niles could only see the pale outline of Corrin’s cheek. Still, he knew he was smirking.

“I endured.”

“For three days.”

“An eternity!”

He felt Corrin’s chuckle against his shoulder. Then a contented sigh.

“I missed you,” Corrin said. His voice was like a bowl of milk thick with cream. Niles frowned. He was again aware of the distance between them. Even if he could forget about it, it would always be there. Even if he held Corrin tightly, they were bound to miss each other again and again. If he just reached out, he might not catch Corrin’s hand.

But maybe their fingers would brush.

“Look,” Niles said. “About the other day. I can’t say that I didn’t mean what I said. But I am sorry I said it.”

“If you meant it, then you shouldn’t apologize,” Corrin said quietly and without sarcasm. “I meant what I said, too.”

“Then it sounds like we’ve reached the same impasse.”

Corrin nodded. His careful hand found the side of Niles’s face, and Corrin traced his thumb over his cheekbone.

“Leo scolded me today,” Corrin said, both bashful and proud.

“About us?”

“Yeah."

Niles found himself caught between a grin and a grimace. He had been somewhat less than a model retainer (more than usual) in the past few days, and he imagined that his lord would have some choice words picked out for him tomorrow. At least Leo was quite charming when angry.

“He said that I don’t understand you,” Corrin said. “He’s right, I think. I love you, but I don’t understand why you don’t want me to take Nina and Kana in. But I want to understand, even if I might not agree.” Corrin’s hand remained gentle on Niles’s face, feeling out his expression in the intimate dark. “Will you tell me?”

The truth was unavoidable. After three days alone with himself, Niles knew what bothered him. He wanted to be understood, but he had also wanted to shield Corrin from the tangled depths of himself. He knew that understanding would be painful and unkind.

“It wasn’t so much about those kids as much as it was about all the kids they weren’t,” Niles said. “I’m sure these girls deserve to live in a castle as much as the next brat. But I’ve been that next brat. The one who wasn’t saved by a handsome prince.”

Now that he’d said it, it sounded ridiculous. Niles laughed.

“Well, I guess I _was_ saved by a prince. It took a long time, though, and I didn’t exactly escape whole or with clean hands. So I do understand their situation. It’s because I understand that I felt…”

Niles struggled with the word, the ugly thing. Niles covered Corrin’s hand with his own and forced himself to say it.

“I felt resentment. Toward you. Toward the world.”

There—it was out. The ugly thing was out. He hated how good it felt, hated the small, hard truth of it. But even if it had been part of him, it wasn’t all of him. It was out.

Niles had said it, but the silence of Corrin’s listening still hung over them. Finally, Corrin spoke.

“That must be difficult to say. I admit, it’s difficult to hear.” Another small silence. “Do you still feel that way?”

With that, Niles allowed himself to feel relief. Corrin’s voice was slight, but hopeful. He wasn’t afraid of the answer, which he was already sure of. But he still wanted to hear it.

“Not toward you. I think I will always resent the world, though.”

“And the girls?”

Niles took a deep breath.

“Not them specifically.”

Corrin sighed. It was an unsatisfying answer.

“I know it’s unfair,” Corrin said. “Not as well as you know it, but I do. I’m not trying to wash my hands of it all. I know that taking in two kids won’t fix the world.”

Niles quietly marveled at the power Corrin spoke with. Frustrated power, but power nonetheless. Living on the streets, Niles had never thought about fixing the world, only surviving it. Things were what they were, and they were mostly bad. But Corrin saw things differently. He saw something that could be changed. Perhaps he even believed he could change it.

Perhaps he would.

But those were large, unintimate thoughts. The problem the world had presented them with was big enough.

“I didn’t know you wanted kids,” Niles murmured.  

“I didn’t know either.”

Kids. The concept was unreal to Niles, and he’d certainly never imagined it for himself. But it was easy to see Corrin as a father. Hadn’t he looked natural with one child in his arms and another tugging at his shirt? Save for the blood and war smoke, they’d made a picturesque family. But try as he might, Niles could not place himself in the picture with them. His imagination failed.

“I want them,” Corrin said with sudden certainty. “Maybe they won’t want me. But if they do, I want them.” Then his will seemed to waver. “But I don’t know if I could be a good parent to them. I remember so little of my childhood.”

“Wanting them is a good place to start,” Niles said. Unfortunately, he did remember his childhood.

Corrin thought on that for a moment. “I’d like you to meet them,” he finally said. “You don’t have to commit to anything. I don’t even know if there’s anything to commit to yet. But if you would see them…”

Again, he asked for little and too much.

“Alright,” Niles said before he could doubt himself. But doubt followed nonetheless.

_This is a terrible idea. Either you’ll hurt them, or they’ll hurt you. Who do you think you’re fooling?_

“Thank you.”

Corrin kissed him, and for a little while his doubts were quieted. For a little while, there was peace between them. For the first time in three nights, they fell asleep to the sound of the other’s breathing.


	4. Chapter 4

The light of day found Niles regretting his promise to meet the girls. There was no chance it would go well—he hardly knew how to be around grown people, let alone children. That would teach him for making decisions after sex.

“Ready?” Corrin asked, giving his hand a squeeze.

Well, not like he could back out now.

“As I’ll ever be,” Niles replied.

Corrin’s faint smile did little to set him at ease. It only reminded Niles that neither of them knew what they were doing. But the doors to the makeshift nursery were open, and Corrin’s grip was firm.

The “nursery” was really just a spare room tacked onto the barracks. Like the rest of the barracks, it had stone floors and a high ceiling that made everything inside it feel a little smaller than it was. It had windows at least—tall, thin windows that let in slats of light, but little view. Probably the room had been meant as study, but Corrin had put in a bed for the girls. Aside from the bed, a single chair, and a small chest, the room was unfurnished. A sparse scattering of toys littered the bare stone floor. Hand-me-downs from the royals, perhaps. The girls were living like real princesses.

“Lord Corrin!”

Ah, so Felicia had been on babysitting duty. The young maid sprung to attention upon their entry, her greeting even more frazzled than usual. Corrin smiled at her, and Felicia instantly relaxed. Corrin had a smile that made you feel like he understood how out of your way you had gone for him, and he was grateful, he really was. For the longest time, Niles hadn’t believed that smile could be real.

“Corn!”

Despite her injured foot, the little one (Kana?) dropped the doll she had been brandishing at Felicia and hobbled over to Corrin, attaching herself to his leg.

“Hi Kana,” Corrin said, not bothering to correct the child’s mispronunciation. He knelt down and smoothed her flyaway hair. “You’re not terrorizing Felicia too much now, are you?”

The little girl giggled, and Corrin beamed. Clearly, they were already smitten with each other. But the other girl (Nina, he remembered) was a harder case. She had been playing with a set of wooden blocks on the floor, and she had not rushed over to Corrin, but walked slowly, her eyes locked on Niles. She still held one of the wooden blocks in her little fist—a makeshift bludgeon.

Smart girl.

“Nina, Kana,” Corrin said. He detached Kana from his leg and tried to turn the fidgeting toddler toward Niles. A mixed success. “I want you to meet someone. This is my husband, Niles.”

“Meet” was generous. They’d met before. It was sweet of Corrin to want them to start over, but surely the girls remembered him as the scary man who had yelled at Corrin in the street. It felt nice to be introduced as his husband, though.

Niles had promised he would try, so he did. He tried to make himself look less horrifying than he was. He tried to look like someone who was used to being introduced as “my husband.” He tried to copy Corrin’s smile.

“Nice to meet you,” he said, feeling his lip curl over “nice.” A sneer. Wonderful.

As expected, Kana clutched at Corrin’s clothes and tried to hide herself behind him. But Nina stood firm and defiant. She sized Niles up, clearly disapproving of what she saw.

“You’re missing an eye,” Nina said.

“Good observation,” Niles replied without thinking. He shouldn’t have let her provoke him, but it was too late. He had tried. He had failed. He was not above arguing with a child. The girl probably didn’t even know what “observation” meant.

Nina glared at him.

“You can’t have my eyes.”

“I wouldn’t want your ugly eyes anyway.”

The room was dead silent. Corrin seemed to have actually stopped breathing. Then Nina’s glare broke. She giggled, and before Niles could help it, he was laughing too. What a farce! What an asshole this child was! He knew her type well—she would have either grown up to run the streets, or she would have gotten her throat cut before her tenth year.

“Oh thank the gods,” Corrin said under his breath. He hugged Kana to his chest and flashed Niles a breathless grin. He made it look so easy.

They spent an hour with the girls, giving Felicia a break. It was not as difficult as Niles had imagined. Kana clung to Corrin nearly the entire time. The kid had probably never had anyone dote on her before, and she was clearly eating up the opportunity to monopolize Corrin’s attention. Niles could relate.

While Corrin and Kana cooed at each other, Niles watched Nina stack blocks and swat them down. Again and again she did this, each time building her tower a little more recklessly. The casual violence of her play fascinated Niles, if play was what it was. When she wasn’t stealing glances at Corrin and her sister, she was staring hard, almost angry, at the blocks. Like they were holding out on her, and if she couldn’t figure them out, she would break them.

She didn’t know how to play with blocks, Niles realized. And why would she? Felicia or Corrin had probably explained them to her, and she did her best to put on a good show for them. But it was a joyless exercise.

“Hey,” Niles crouched down next to Nina. Before she could flinch away, he grabbed a handful of her gray hair. Clean enough, but tangled. The child yelped and smacked his arm, to little effect.

“This is a mess,” Niles said calmly. “Let’s fix that.”

“You are a bastard man,” Nina growled, low enough so Corrin wouldn’t hear.

“Oh sweetheart, I know.”

She glared at him. She glared at him as he rummaged in the chest for a brush, a couple of ribbons that had certainly belonged to Elise. She glared at him as he sat her down in the chair and told her not to squirm. That glare was probably what had kept the maids from brushing her hair, or from giving her more than a perfunctory dip into the bath. But she wouldn’t run from him, Niles knew. She wouldn’t want to lose.

Brushing Nina’s hair was like brushing dull straw. But with care, perhaps it could be beautiful. As he fiddled out knots, Niles recalled how he had worn his hair long as a kid. All the ways he’d pulled it out of his face. Eventually, he had sawed it off with a knife. He remembered looked at the white tuft in his fist and thinking that it could have belonged to any animal.

The braids turned out clumsier than Niles had expected. His hands had somewhat lost their memory of long hair. Not the prettiest, but they held firm as Nina tugged and poked her fingers through them. They fascinated her. She stood up and shook her head. The braids plapp-plapped against her arms. Grinning, she ran to show off to Corrin and her sister.

Like a real kid, Niles thought. Whatever that was.

Felicia returned when the hour was up, somewhat refreshed, and Kana had very reluctantly let Corrin go after he’d promised to return that night.

“As soon as I can,” he’d said, smiling at Kana.

Who wouldn’t believe him?

When the nursery doors were closed behind them, Corrin hugged Niles. It was so sudden that he nearly headbutted Niles in the chin.

“Thank you,” he said. He was starry-eyed, like a child himself. “You were amazing.”

“I get that a lot,” Niles managed to say. “Usually under different circumstances.”

Corrin chuckled warmly. He pulled back, keeping his hands on Niles’s arms.

“What did you think?” Corrin asked. His face was still bright, but Niles saw the touch of anxiety there. He wanted so badly for Niles to like them. Niles fumbled with the feeling. It was still strange to think that his approval could matter to someone.

“They’re alright. Not as wicked as I thought they’d be.”

“Oh Niles.”

Corrin spoke in a pleased hum. _Oh Niles, Niles, Niles!_ He kissed him on the cheek, a quick, chaste thing, and Niles felt like he could do it after all. He could be gentle and kind. He felt again like laughing. Instead, he touched the buzzing inch of skin Corrin had kissed.

“I can think of better places for you to kiss, you know.”

“Later,” Corrin promised. As he’d promised Kana. “I’d love to, but I have a meeting.”

“A meeting?”

“Mmhmm.”

Corrin kissed him again. On the lips this time. Less chaste.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he said, leaving Niles dazed and confused. The royals, as far as he knew, were not convening that afternoon.

 

The gravestone was smooth and black, cut from the onyx they mined. It was also blank. Despite what they called it, the stone bore no name and covered no bones. Corrin had meant for the stone to memorialize all lost in the war, Nohrians and Hoshidans alike. A number that could not be easily counted, much less named.

Corrin found Azura waiting for him in front of the stone. She was singing—a song of mourning to quiet the dead and ask their forgiveness. She did not stop for Corrin, nor would he have wished her to. He stood at a respectful distance, listening to the sad arc of her voice. Reverence shuddered through him. Although there was nothing intrinsically sacred about the stone or the land it lay on, Azura’s song made them holy.

When the last notes settled, she turned to Corrin. He approached.

“That was beautiful,” he said.  

“I’m afraid that beautiful is all it is,” Azura replied. “If the dead want anything, it’s not to be consoled. It’s to live.” She stared at the gravestone, her eyes flat. “You’ve heard, then, about the boarder villages.”

A hard breath knifed through Corrin.

“Yes,” he said hesitantly, as if acknowledging it made it true. “Xander briefed me this morning.”

But he hadn’t thought about it, he realized. Not really. Xander had told him, and what Iago ordered had been horrible. But he’d tucked it away, along with all of the horrors of war he’d failed to prevent. He had introduced his husband to two little girls while knowing that, in an occupied village, Nohrian troops had made a hundred Hoshidan captives murder each other.

The thought should have repulsed him, sunk him. It didn’t. He felt a ripple of disgust with himself, and then the ripple passed.  

“It’s difficult to imagine such a thing,” Corrin said.

“If this war drags on, you won’t have to. You’ll see it for yourself.”

There was nothing Corrin could say. She was right. Iago was an architect of cruelty. And this was but one of his designs.

“Have you decided about the children?”

“What?” Although he’d heard her clearly, thinking about the massacre had muddled him. He stood blinking, feeling stupid.

“The girls.”

“Yes. I have. I think I have.” Corrin frowned. He had been so certain. Now it was all coming out wrong. “I want to care for them.”

“You want to be their father,” Azura suggested.

“Yes.” Why had he been afraid to admit that? “I do. If they let me.”

Azura shut her eyes and nodded. When she opened her eyes again, she looked pained.

“You’re not going to like hearing this,” she said. “And I won’t like saying it. But I offer this advice as an ally and as a friend. If you care for those children, send them away. Do not let them stay here.”

It was as if she had slapped him.

“No.”

“Corrin, let me explain.”

A single, derisive laugh punched its way out of Corrin. For a moment, he was surprised—he’d sounded like his husband. But Azura continued undaunted.

“You’ve seen what this war has done. To the people of Hoshido and Nohr. To us. We swore we’d be ready to die and kill to end it. That’s the choice we made. But you can’t choose to make those children walk this path with you. If Garon were to learn about the girls, do you really think he would leave them be? He would take them from you. He would take everything that gives you strength and hope and turn them against you. And what good would you be to them then?”

“Garon won’t find out. He doesn’t know about the Astral Plane. They’ll be safe here.”

“True, he doesn’t know yet. But don’t you think he or Iago would be suspicious about where we disappear to? This place offers us some shelter, but it isn’t invulnerable. We’re still close to the surface. But there are other places that are deeper, more hidden. Places that are harder to find if you don’t know the way.”

Corrin stared at Azura, unbelieving. Looking at her was like looking into very clear water. She was there, but she also wasn’t. For the first time, Corrin felt unsettled in her presence. She was his closest ally, and in that moment, she was completely foreign to him.

“You’re telling me to send Nina and Kana off to one of these…these secluded realms.”

“I said you wouldn’t like it.” She smiled weakly.

“I can’t do that.”

“I’d like you to at least consider it.”

“Consider it?” Corrin felt his ears go hot. “You mean consider sending those girls away to live in some foreign, forsaken land without a family? Consider making them prisoners of an empty house? I don’t have to consider it—I lived it. And I don’t have to remember everything to know that that’s no way to grow up.”

It felt good to speak his bitterness. Like digging nails into an angry rash, it felt good to hurt. It felt true.

Until it didn’t.

Regret hit Corrin hard. What was he thinking, saying that to Azura? _Azura_ , the one person who came closest to understanding what it had been like? He buried his face in his hands.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not myself.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t apologize.” She took his hand. Lowered it. _I know what you are_ , her touch seemed to say. _You are like me_.

“I’m just…I’m just tired, Azura. I’m tired of children being shuffled around like pawns in someone else’s war game.”

“I know.”

“I want it to be better for them.”

“I know.” Azura let go of his hand. “But sometimes there is no ‘better.’ Sometimes there’s only your best.”

“But I can’t choose that for them. Not after what I went through.”

“It’s what I’m choosing.”

It took Corrin a moment to parse her meaning.

“I want to tell you ‘congratulations,’” he said. “But it wouldn’t feel quite right to do so, given the circumstances. Thank you, though. For telling me.”

Azura’s smile was hollow.

“Do you think I’m a bad person?”

“Of course not.”

Even if he could not bring himself to make the same choice as her, Corrin could not think badly of Azura. She was the strongest person he knew—so much stronger than himself.

“Because sometimes I think I am.” Azura spoke calmly, as if she were commenting on the weather rather than condemning herself. Her gaze settled on the gravestone. “But I’ve made my peace with it. If my child grows to hate me, I’ll only have my own choices to blame. We were careless, after all.”

Corrin shook his head.

“You were just being people,” he said, quick to defend her from herself.

Azura gave Corrin a look that broke his heart. The Astral Plane’s strange sun had set, and the twilight made her seem very small and young. He was suddenly afraid for her, afraid that she was the one about to go far, far away. To a place he couldn’t follow.

“Oh Corrin,” she said. “We’ve never been ‘just people,’ have we?”


	5. Chapter 5

The girls became part of Niles’s routine. He didn’t mean them to. But Corrin now spent almost all of his free time with them, and it was easy for Niles to tag along. Easy to drop in on his own, though he usually didn’t stay long when he did. Niles brought things he thought the girls might find interesting—a chipped teacup, owl pellets, a fan with printed sparrows flying across it, a broken parasol, pieces of onyx, snail shells, a bird’s nest. When he gave them these things, Kana, who had grown used to him, smiled or giggled. Nina didn’t. But sometimes he caught her inspecting the onyx in the sunlight or opening and closing the fan with a dreamy expression. She had stopped pretending to play with blocks.

Nina was a fascination. Where Kana could be sweet and delightful, she was vicious and unsettling. A little wildling. The night of his first visit, she had bitten the poor maid who, trying to wash her hair, had undid her braids. Hearing about it made Niles feel smug and complicit. When he visited the next day, Nina had stomped up to him, all pride. They’d exchanged a long look. Then she’d demanded he braid her hair.

“She’s really taken to you,” Corrin observed.

“She likes you better,” Niles replied. He was almost certain this was true. Though rare, Nina would sometimes come up to Corrin, hug him with all her strength, then run away before he could hug her back. So quick you questioned whether she’d done it. Niles couldn’t imagine her approaching him like that.

Still, he was the one she hovered around. He was the one she asked to braid her hair every night. That probably meant something.

He thought he understood her heart. He didn’t always. Nina surprised him sometimes by being better than he thought she was. These moments confused Niles. They impressed and disappointed him.

Kana, for instance. Nina had a deep patience for the toddler. A remnant, Niles assumed, of being the one thing between the younger girl and the rest of the world. It was a hard thing, children raising other children. Nina had done her best out of necessity, and Kana’s survival was a testament to her sister’s care. But Nina’s patience had its limits, and Kana demanded to be indulged. When she wasn’t, she could quickly become a terror.

Niles saw this happen once on a visit to the nursery. Kana had been fussy that day, and not even Corrin had been able to soothe her. She wanted Nina. She had followed her around the room, demanding attention that Nina, out of spite or weariness, refused to give. Neglected, Kana grew mean. She poked at Nina and yanked at her braids. Finally, she shoved her hard enough for Nina to stumble backward.

Niles had held his breath and waited for Nina to retaliate, to hit Kana or shove her back. So he could whisk Kana safely out of her reach. So he could scold Nina, who should have known better. He didn’t get the chance.

“You are a _bad_ child,” Nina had hissed, anger falling from her like soft lightning. Then she had turned and marched herself to the far end of the room where she refused to look at her sister. Kana had stood dazed. Then she begun to wail so loud it made his teeth hurt. Niles went to her then. He scooped her up and cradled her as he had seen Corrin do. But she had been inconsolable, and Nina had sat on the other side of the nursery, snapping the fan he had given her open and shut. The painted sparrows flew free one instant, then swallowed the next.

 

Kana’s foot recovered faster than anticipated. Within a week she was dashing around the nursery, jumping on the bed and causing trouble for Felicia.

“It’s amazing how fast children heal,” Corrin remarked.

From the physical stuff, at least, Niles thought to himself. But he was glad to see the kid running around.

With Kana back on her feet, Corrin seemed anxious to get the girls outside of the castle, despite the fact that the Astral Plane was a mostly desolate place.

“I want them to see more of the world,” he explained. Niles didn’t think that the Astral Plane counted as “the world.” The girls had seen plenty of the world when they’d lived on the streets as it was. But it wasn’t a bad idea. These girls were still getting used to living with a roof over their heads. Though spacious, the castle must have been stifling to them. Maybe they needed to be let to run loose for a bit.

Niles had surveyed the lands outside the castle walls—Lord Leo had ordered it after they’d first arrived in the Astral Plane. It was an empty land, as far as he could tell. Eerily unpeopled, and hardly any animals. Not that it had always been that way. He had found a couple of abandoned villages. Stone houses and walls grown over with ivy. Pastures fencing in sunlight. Tables set with clay dishware. Shingles rotting on the rooves. Wells that still held water.

He brought Corrin and the girls to explore one of these villages. After some hesitation and a little gentle nudging, Kana and Nina were tearing through the deserted fields, quickly learning that rolling in the grass made their skin hop and itch.

“You’re sure it’s safe here?” Corrin asked. He stood at the pasture gate, eyes following the girls as the bobbed through the tall grass. He nervously picked at the gate. A good way to get a splinter.

“I did a sweep of the place yesterday,” Niles said.

“Yesterday.” A dusty chip of wood broke between Corrin’s fingers. He tossed the pieces into the dirt.

“No one ever comes here.” The sound of Corrin’s nails against the crumbling wood set Niles on edge. The girls were fine. They were enjoying themselves, even. “You’re the one who wanted them to see outside the castle,” Niles reminded him.

“You’re right.” Corrin dropped his hand from the gate, dusting his fingertips against his leg. “You’re right,” he repeated to make it true. “I’m being stupid, I know. I guess this place just spooked me a little.”

Kana’s high-pitched screech made them both jump. Nina had thrown a handful of grass at her face. They watched as the child struggled to reciprocate, the grass sticking to her sweaty hands. They looked at each other, and Corrin’s face was caught between shock, panic, and relief. Then it collapsed into laughter. Niles looked away, grinning.

They ate lunch in one of the abandoned houses, “borrowing” its table and dishes. Corrin unwrapped a loaf of bread baked fresh that morning. He broke the loaf into four and layered each piece with slices of blond cheese. Finally, he parceled out handfuls of dried apricots.

The girls weren’t messy eaters, but they weren’t pretty eaters either. They hunched in their seats and pulled their food close to them. Nobles, Niles had learned, ate with their shoulders back and stared down their noses at their plates as if they had offended them. But plenty of kids had poor table manners. Niles chewed the sweetness from a dried apricot and watched the girls stuff their mouths with bread and cheese while Corrin bounced Kana on his lab and gently reminded Nina to sit up straight, take small bites, and Nina we don’t do that with forks.

It was nice, Niles thought. In a quiet, boring way. They were doing what other people did—sitting down at a table, eating, fussing over kids. Not something Niles had ever wanted. But nice nonetheless.

“It doesn’t feel right, does it?”

The apricot fell from between his lips onto his plate. A small, sullen thud. Across the table, Corrin looked expectant.

“Excuse me?”

“This.” Corrin gestured at the air. “This house. This village. It feels like, I don’t know. Like graverobbing?”

Niles sighed. For some reason, his heart was pounding hard in his chest.

“Trust me, it doesn’t.”

“Hmm.” Corrin picked a blade of grass out of Kana’s hair. “Where do you think they all went?”

Niles shrugged. He’d never given it much thought. And he certainly didn’t have any answers, if answers were what Corrin was really after.

“Dunno. They could’ve been disappeared by magic. Or war.” Corrin flinched. “Or maybe they all just decided to leave one day.”

“Do you think they’d come back?”

“I suppose they could, if they’re alive. We were able to get here from Nohr, after all. Though it would put us in a rather compromising position if they returned.”

Nina was stabbing the table with her fork, and Niles covered her hand to make her stop. When he looked up, Corrin was frowning, lost in thought.

“You’re serious,” Niles realized.

“No, not really. Just speculating. Who doesn’t like a mystery, right?” Corrin brushed a crumb from Kana’s face, and Niles let the issue drop.

They finished lunch, and Corrin insisted on cleaning the table and dishes. Even if the house’s former owners never returned, it seemed like the respectful thing to do.  

Niles wiped the table with the cloth they’d used to wrap the bread. Across the room, Nina was putting the cutlery away. She picked up a knife and inspected it, turning the dull blade over a couple of times. She seemed pleased. She looked around the room, and, seeing Niles watching her, reluctantly put the knife back where she’d found it.

 

They didn’t return to the village. It wasn’t something they explicitly decided, but Niles didn’t suggest that they go back and neither did Corrin. Anyway, there were other places to explore with the girls. They spent afternoons in a forest empty of animals, on a lake empty of fish. These excursions made Niles feel like he should be teaching the girls things. The names of trees, or which berries and mushrooms were safe to eat. But having spent most of his life in cities, Niles hardly knew these things himself, and the foliage in the Astral Plane was just different enough to render the little knowledge he had useless.

It was surprisingly frustrating. His whole life had made him an expert at taking. But now he found that he had precious little to give.

Perhaps that was why Niles snuck the girls out of their room and up to the balcony one night. It was a cool night to be out in just pajamas, but if the girls were cold, they didn’t complain. Niles wondered if they’d ever thought to complain about things like the weather.

“See that?” Niles asked, pointing into the sky.

“Star!” Kana chirped. She had one hand curled in Niles’s cape and was rocking back and forth on her heels, clearly thrilled to be out past her bedtime. Nina was silent, but she looked where he pointed.

“See that bright, reddish star there above that turret? That star is called Knokros.”

“Koskos,” Kana gurgled.

“Close enough. Now, see those two stars above it? And the two below?” Niles traced the path of his sight. “Those stars make up the constellation Hasse, the Spring Hare.”

“What’s a constellation,” Nina demanded.

“A group of stars. But you can pretend they look like something else. Like a rabbit.”

“Why?”

Niles shrugged. “For fun.”

It felt silly, suddenly, to explain constellations to the girls. Why indeed? It was just some offhand knowledge he’d picked up from crooked men whose other teachings had made Niles a worse person. And maybe they had been bullshitting him when they’d gestured at the sky and called that a sheep, that a water jug. Still, his knowledge of the stars had brought him comfort when he’d had little else.

“I don’t see a rabbit.”

“Imagine the two stars at the top are the tips of its ears,” Niles said. “That star’s the tip of its nose. Now imagine the rabbit’s back coming down like this.” Niles drew an arc with his finger. “Do you see it?”

“Hmm,” Nina squinted hard at the sky. “What about that one.” She jabbed a finger at a cluster of stars above Hasse’s ears.

“What do you think?”

“A worm.”

“Worm!” Kana exclaimed as she tangled herself in the back of Niles’s cloak. The sky had lost her attention.

“Huh,” Niles said. “I guess it could be a worm. I always saw it as a wheel, though. See how those stars make a circle?”

Nina didn’t say anything, but she nodded and pointed to another set of stars. She was testing him, Niles thought. As with most things, her interest was terse and a bit antagonistic. She liked to spar with him. Still, he obediently put a name to each constellation she pointed out. It felt nice to share that. Familiar.

“I spent a lot of time looking at the stars when I was your age,” Niles said. They were lying on the floor, faces skyward. Kana had curled up and gone to sleep on his cloak. Her nose whistled as she dreamed.

“You’re old,” Nina observed.

“Didn’t expect to last this long, so I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Why’d you lose your eye?”

“Why’d you lose your parents?”

That shut Nina up for a bit. But Niles could feel her resentment. Her silent demand to be appeased.

“I met a madman once,” Niles said. A peace offering.  

Nina sniffed. “Oh?”

“Yup. He didn’t have an eye either.” That was a lie, but Nina seemed to enjoy the symmetry of that detail. In truth, Niles couldn’t remember at all what the man had looked like. “We slept a couple of nights under the same bridge. He talked to himself, and sometimes he talked to me.”

The man had been feverish. He’d been robbed and left under the bridge to die. Niles left those part out.

“He talked a lot of crazy things about stars. He told me that even though they look small, stars are actually big. Bigger than a whole town, he said. And they are very, very far apart from each other. So far that you could spend your entire life walking from one star and never reach the next one.

I thought that, if it were true, it must be incredibly lonely to be a star. No matter how brilliantly you shone, you’d have no one to share your light with. It seemed cruel.”

The night the madman had told him that, Niles had dragged him out from under the bridge so he could look upon the stars. The man was dead the by next morning. Niles had worn his shirt for some time after that.

“Maybe it wasn’t true,” Niles continued. “But if it is, I like to think of constellations as connecting all those lonely stars. Even if it’s not a real connection, at least from here, they look like they belong together. I found comfort in that.”

Nina had gone strangely quiet. When Niles looked over, he saw that she had fallen asleep next to her sister, one hand gripping the hem of his cloak.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some violence in this one. Just letting you know.

“Your girl’s a thief.”

Niles didn’t expect such a pithy phrase to upset him, so when anger shot up his throat, he nearly choked. He caged it at the last moment behind a row of teeth. Turned that row of teeth into a grin.

“Really, Jakob? You corner me outside the bathhouse, dripping wet, and _that’s_ the best you can give?”

“Your hair’s hardly damp.”

“ _Dripping_.”

Jakob glowered at him. That was not unusual. Jakob tended to glower at him when they were out of Corrin’s sight. Snake recognized snake. And Niles had seen through Jakob immediately. Doting and vicious. Living at the feet of another. Ready to dirty his hands to keep his lord’s immaculate. Niles would have found the man comical if he hadn’t found him repulsive. Or familiar.

At least the feeling was mutual.

“Trust me,” Jakob said. “If I had it my way, I wouldn’t speak another word to you.”

“And yet here you are, having your way with me. Why Jakob, it’s downright scandalous! I don’t need to remind you that I’m a married man, do I?”

Dangling Corrin’s affection before him was the lowest blow Niles could pull and usually the most effective. But today, Jakob was hardly phased. He smirked. A bad sign.

“Put your claws away for a moment, Niles. I’m trying to do you a favor.”

“Yes, accusing a child is _very_ generous of you,” Niles sneered. If he could hear his own defensiveness, it was certain that Jakob could too.

“Things have been going missing since Lord Corrin took them in,” Jakob continued. “A teaspoon or two wouldn’t be worth mentioning, but now I’ve heard that your girl has stolen a knife.”

 _Your girl_ , he had said. Again. And Niles knew he meant it as an accusation, knew that Jakob was trying to attach his shame to her or vice versa. But it felt good. Like a theft. It wasn’t something Niles had thought before. He hadn’t let himself think it. But now he found it fit him quite snugly. _Mine_.

“And do you have any real proof that she did it, or is it just gossip? Because I seem to recall servants having a reputation for sticky fingers. Among other things.”

“I assure you, you’ll not get far accusing my staff.”

“Really? And whose side do you think Corrin would take? Yours? Or the sweet girl whose life he literally saved?”

“You would force him to choose?”

Niles stumbled over that thought, which, coming from Jakob, was almost sincere. He thought about the tender look that settled on Corrin’s face when he was with the girls. He thought about how exhausted he’d been these past weeks, how anxious he could become over the girls’ welfare, and how news from the frontlines left him looking hollow. He thought about the concessions in affection Nina had made. How she had fallen asleep grasping his cloak. The quiet blasphemy of hope he had felt at that.

He needed to protect that feeling.

“You said you were doing me a favor,” Niles said, crossing his arms and feigning disinterest. “I’m still waiting to hear what it is.”

“Gods, you’re dense. I’m giving you a chance to deal with this before Lord Corrin has to know. Send a thief to catch a thief, and all that.”

“She’s not a thief.”

“Pardon?”

“She’s not a thief. Even if she did take something, that doesn’t make her a thief.”

Jakob looked at him like he was mad. Niles was beginning to suspect that he was.

“Look, I understand that that’s probably something important to you. But I don’t care. Just handle it before we find ourselves eating with nothing but our hands.”

Jakob waved dismissively at him and walked off with the stride of a man satisfied with having the last word. The fucker. Though Niles couldn’t deny that he hadn’t won that conversation. A shame—it would have been pleasant to see Jakob’s face twisted in defeat.

Niles leaned against the wall of the bathhouse. It had been getting dark when Jakob pulled him aside, and now the sun had fully set.

So. Nina was stealing.

Niles covered his eye with his fist. His thoughts were loud and saying nothing. He needed to deal with this. He needed to calm down and think.

Instead of doing that, he laughed. He laughed until his gut hurt.

 

According to Kaze’s report, they wouldn’t have much time. Hans’s squadron was advancing west at an alarming speed. Their most likely target was a fortress town. According to Kaze’s best estimate, they’d be upon it within three days. Which gave them only two to get there first. They would have to go quickly, which meant sending a small group. A small group tasked with subduing an entire town. They would leave at dawn.

In the war room, Corrin had found it easy to make those decisions. But now, walking back to his quarters, he felt the familiar tide of dread rising within him. He had been away from the battlefield too long. He had forgotten how horrible it was to ride toward death.  

 _Horrible?_ _Shouldn’t it feel horrible to do horrible things? Does it make you feel good to feel so bad about it? Does it make you feel like a better person?_

The plan was to push through to the commander. If the mission went well, they would break the Hoshidian forces with minimal casualties.

_But there will be casualties. And they’ll be yours._

They would chase the townspeople into the mountains and set some houses on fire for Hans to find. If they were successful, they could prevent a slaughter.

_Or Hans will chase the people into the mountains slaughter them anyway after you’ve worn down their only defenses. And even if he doesn’t, how many do you think will die in the prison camps laboring to fuel the Nohrian war machine?_

_You don’t get to pretend to play savior this time._

_You chose this._

_This is your war._

_This is your fault._

“Corrin?”

Niles looked up at him from the bed and Corrin realized that he’d made it home. That was good. But Niles’s face was shadowed with worry. That was less good.

“Do you want to come in and maybe close the door?”

Corrin did. Then he walked himself to the dining table. Poured a glass of water from the jug. Drank. Felt the muscles in his throat work quietly, reliably.

“So,” Niles offered. He sat up and let his legs hang off the bed. “I take it that it was quite a rough meeting?”

“No, not especially,” Corrin said. He was surprised by how casually his words came. He’d spoken easily at the meeting, too. He set the glass down, his hand a little heavy. The sound of its impact was satisfying.

“We’re riding tomorrow,” he said. “At dawn. We’re going to take a Hoshidian fortress town before Hans does.”

“Oh.” Corrin could see some of the worry go out of Niles’s shoulders. “Then I’ll make sure my quiver’s full before then.”

“I asked that you not be assigned to this mission.”

“Oh,” Niles said again. He frowned. “Lord Leo—”

“He’s approved my decision.”

Niles stared at him. Then he patted the open space on the bed next to him. Corrin moved obediently. He sank onto the bed, sank his head into Niles’s shoulder. He smelled faintly of soap.

“I don’t want to leave them alone,” Corrin murmured. “They’ve been doing so well, but if we both leave…I’m afraid of what may happen.”

“And I’m afraid of what may happen if I take my eye off you,” Niles said. His hand was warm against Corrin’s back. “But you’re right. We can’t both leave, can we?”

“You’re…alright with it?” Corrin asked.

“Of course,” Niles said. “Can you imagine the fit Nina would throw if I weren’t around to braid her hair? We can’t have that.”

Well. That simplified things at least. Corrin hadn’t been expecting them to argue, but he had expected, well, _something_. Some tense words, some hurt feelings. He had prepared room in his heart for guilt. But Niles had accepted him with a smile and a joke. He should, Corrin knew, feel relieved. He felt incomplete.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been making a lot of decisions on my own lately.”

“Well, you _are_ a prince. Telling people what to do is part of the charm.”

“Is it?” Corrin mused. Being a prince seemed like a flimsy reason for people to listen to him. And if doing so had done anyone any good, he couldn’t see it.

“It can be quite thrilling, being ordered around. In the right circumstances, of course.” His voice teased a smirk, and he spoke closely to Corrin’s ear. His hand crept from Corrin’s back to his hip.

“I need to sleep,” Corrin reminded him. There were a precious few hours until dawn.

“You do,” Niles agreed. “Wouldn’t want you swooning on the battlefield.” He planted a kiss on Corrin’s forehead and withdrew his hand. Corrin felt its absence keenly.

They changed into sleep clothes and got under the covers. Corrin hoped he would fall asleep instantly. He was tired. He had been thoroughly tired for a long time. But he couldn’t sleep. He listened to his husband’s breathing stretch long and deep as half-formed fears tugged as his mind.

“Niles,” he whispered. “Niles,” he whispered again, a little louder.

“Hrmm?” Niles cleared the sleep from his throat. “What is it?

What _was_ it? Corrin hadn’t had anything particular in mind when he’d called out to Niles. He had just wanted the comfort of hearing him respond. And even that hadn’t been enough, hadn’t been what he’d really wanted.

“After the war,” Corrin found himself saying. “When the fighting’s over, let’s go somewhere. Somewhere far away where nobody knows us. We’ll take the girls. We’ll go as a…we’ll all go together.”

Niles was silent for so long that Corrin wondered if he’d fallen back asleep. Or maybe he hadn’t called out to him at all. Maybe he’d dreamt it. Maybe he’d wake up and realize that the past year had been nothing but a long, long dream.

“That sounds…nice,” Niles said finally. Hesitantly. He sought out Corrin’s hand, and Corrin let him take it.

But he was heartsore.

He knew it was difficult to imagine, much less believe. What he was asking from Niles wasn’t something he could give. There were no assurances in war. Unwisely, he’d wanted it just the same.

He felt Niles nod off next to him, felt his hold on his hand loosen. Alone in consciousness, Corrin closed his eyes and waited for dawn.

 

Niles had thought he would be fine alone with the girls. He quickly realized he’d thought wrong, however.

Upon learning that Corrin was gone, Kana became distraught. She cried and cried and there was nothing Niles or anyone else could do to calm her. Nina was no help. She didn’t cry—the girl was a perfect stoic about Corrin’s departure. She sat herself down on the floor and would not be moved. She let her sister act out for her.

It would have been easier, Niles thought, if Corrin had said goodbye. He knew why he hadn’t. It had been past the girls’ bedtime when Corrin had come home the night before, dazed and disjointed. And he had left so early that even Niles, an early riser himself, had woken to an empty bed. He’d probably wanted to make a clean break, wanted to ride off knowing the girls were sleeping peacefully instead of having to tear himself away from them. It was a somewhat selfish impulse, but one that could be forgiven. Provided that he returned in one piece.

But of course he’d come back, Niles thought as he bounced a whimpering Kana on his knee. Him and Lord Leo both. Corrin was, after all, a dragon. And although he found many things about Odin suspicious, he did trust him to guard their liege with his life. It was a waste of time to worry about them. Instead, he should embrace the opportunity he’d been given—an opportunity to talk to Nina about stealing.

Except he didn’t know where to begin. For the first couple of days after Corrin’s departure, she hardly spoke a word to him. She tolerated him being there, but obstinately, as if he were complicit in Corrin’s absence. And he had his hands full enough with Kana, who clung to him like she didn’t trust him to stay. He couldn’t have a serious conversation while juggling a weepy toddler, could he?

Not that that was a real excuse, and on the third day after putting Kana down for a nap, Niles decided that it was time to talk to Nina. She was sitting cross-legged on a chair and placing a line of rocks on the windowsill. Concentrating hard, or, alternatively, ignoring him.

There was no way to be casual about this. He walked over to the window and leaned awkwardly against the wall.

“Are you stealing things?”

Nina didn’t look up from her rocks. She set another one down—a hollow _plink_ of stone against stone.

“No,” she said.

“You’re not in trouble. I just want to know.”

“No.”

 _Well then, case closed,_ Niles thought. He shouldn’t have expected this to be easy, especially with her already soured toward him. Niles sighed. He sat down on the floor, back against the wall.

“You know, I used to be a thief,” he said.

 _Plink_ , went another stone.

“I didn’t have parents either. I lived on the streets and stole to survive. But it cost me a lot of things, including my eye. It put me in bad situations around bad people.”

 _Plink, plink_.

Niles sighed.

“Look, I don’t care about what it was you took. Things are just things. But you shouldn’t steal. You shouldn’t be like me. Not when you have a chance to be better.”

Silence. Niles looked over at Nina and saw that she had filled the windowsill. But she was frowning. She still wouldn’t look at him.

“Nina?”

“Don’t wanna be like you.” Her words were quiet, but deliberate. 

“Because I’m a bastard man?”

She nodded her head so quickly it was violent. Then she hopped down from the chair and sprinted across the room to the bed. She shuffled her way under the blankets, hiding from him.

Niles stood up, stretched his back. He looked at the clutter of rocks on the windowsill. Keepsakes from their trips out into the Astral Plane, he realized. He’d thought she’d just been filling her pockets with junk. And, well, he’d been right.

Suddenly the thought of her becoming a thief seemed ridiculous. What had he been worried about? This was a little girl who chose to hold onto a pocketful of stones. She would be provided for. She wouldn’t want for anything except the stones on the ground. And who would stop her from taking them?

No, he thought with sudden and fierce pride. She wasn’t going to be like him.  

 

After five days, they came home. Fatigued and bruised, but in one piece.

Later Odin would tell him about the battle. About how the Hoshidian troops had kept fighting even after they’d struck down their commander. About how, in desperation to end things quickly and decisively, they had set fire to the town. How the fire, whipped by unusually strong winds, had spread faster and farther than they had anticipated.

But Niles didn’t care about all of that. What he cared about was seeing Corrin ride through the castle gates, Lord Leo riding behind him. Corrin, his armor singed and a bruise blooming over his left cheekbone. Corrin, dismounting, seeing him and looking a little less tired. Kana, wriggling free from his arms. Running on stout legs across the castle stones, yelling, “Papa! Papa!” Nina running after her into Corrin’s open arms.

 

Yelling wrenched Corrin from his dreams. He woke to the smell of burning and the sound of steel biting steel. More cries. Niles was out of bed before him, bow in hand and quiver at his side.

“Your armor,” he said as Corrin grabbed Yato.

“No time,” said Corrin. He was already out the door, heart hammering in his throat.

The mess hall was on fire. Across the courtyard at the east gate, soldiers were fending off an enemy that seemed to shimmer in and out of sight. Invisible soldiers. No wonder they had taken the night watch by surprise. But despite the catastrophe, Corrin felt a flicker of relief. If the enemy had broken in at the east gate, that meant they had practically the entire length of the castle between them and the nursery. And they would advance no further.

Corrin sprinted across the courtyard, lunging at one of the invisible soldiers just as it vanished. His blade caught something, but only fleetingly. He parried the axe aimed at his head, kicking at the space before him. His blow landed, and for an instant the solider rippled into view. Corrin’s blade was in its spine before the instant was over.

Before Corrin could catch his breath, another invisible soldier was upon him. They weren’t particularly well trained, these soldiers. They were not disciplined and swift like the Hoshidians, nor did they have the endurance of Nohrian troops. But they were persistent, and they seemed to totally lack a fear of death.

He didn’t hear the sound of wings until the wyvern had its talons in his shoulder. Stupid with pain, Corrin wondered at the ground lurching away as the beast carried him off. Then a sharp whistle, the wyvern’s strangled scream as the arrow pierced the soft of its throat. Then the ground rushing forward painfully, knocking the wind from his gut. He had enough wits about him to roll out of the dying wyvern’s way as it crashed next to him, at least. He rose with difficulty, just in time to see a flash of the wyvern’s rider staggering toward him, blade drawn.

Two arrows to the chest and the rider dropped.

“Shit,” Niles hissed, catching Corrin by the arm as he stumbled. He uncorked a vulnerary and poured it over Corrin’s shoulder. Almost immediately the pain began to recede.

“Thanks for the cover,” Corrin said.

“You can thank me later. Creatively, I hope. But for now, you should fall back.”

Niles fired a shot at an oncoming mounted soldier, but the arrow glanced off its armor. They leapt out of the way, and with a burst of draconic strength Corrin caught the horse’s back leg. The horse slipped, coming down hard on its side and pinning its rider. Niles’s second shot did not miss.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Corrin said, rubbing at his shoulder. If we don’t hold them off here, they’ll—”

A red flare fractured the western sky. Then another. And another. Niles turned, following his husband’s stricken gaze.

“Dammit, another breach. Corrin—!”

An instant of light and Corrin was gone. In his place towered a chaos of scales and fangs. A dragon rearing on its hind legs.

The dragon bound off toward the west gate, his strides uneven, faltering on his left side. The throb in his shoulder was negligible. He just had to get there. He ran toward the smoke, the budding fires, his talons leaving deep scars in the earth.

The battle was thicker, the enemy’s number greater at the west gate. Had the attack on the east gate been a feint to split their forces? Were they surrounded? The invisible soldiers didn’t seem capable of speech, so how had they planned this attack? He had to get to the girls. He had to figure out what was happening. But his thoughts evaporated as soon as they formed.

The dragon was single-minded.

It lowered its head and charged into the advancing enemy line. What it lacked in precision it made up in force and size. It thrashed, and ribcages broke against its tail. It thrashed, and a skull caved in under its foot. It thrashed, and its antlers punctured lungs, eyes, throats.

The dragon bellowed, euphoric with violence. Its rage and fear had found a target, and what a wonderful target it was. Little dolls that went pulpy under its talons, that seemed inexhaustible in number. Foul, dark, nameless things that were better off dead, how _dare_ they have come here? How good of them to come here!

An arm snapped between the dragon’s jaws. Rivulets of blood spilled down its long white neck. A lance splintered against its scales. Its wielder’s spine splintered under the dragon’s heel. It was beautiful, thoughtless, joyful. Killing made pure of reason and consequence. Why was he here? What was he fighting for? The dragon had no use for these questions. It didn’t care.

How wonderful it was not to care.

 

Corrin’s transformation was a glorious and terrifying thing. Even Niles could forget the force that slept beneath his husband’s kindness. It was always closer to the surface than he remembered. Terrifying, but comforting, too, to have a dragon at your side. To stand so close to power.

So when Corrin took off toward the west gate without him, Niles was less than thrilled. But he understood. Corrin needed to get to their girls, and Niles would only slow him down. Anyway, he had more than enough to deal with at the east gate.

Niles sunk an arrow into an enemy soldier’s forehead, or where he thought its forehead should be. It was awfully unfair, having to fight a practically invisible army. Of course, he wasn’t above underhanded tactics himself. He dodged out of the way of an incoming axe, then grabbed his attacker and pulled them in front of another soldier’s blade. The blade stuck fast in the corpse, and Niles jammed an arrow through the enemy’s neck.

Despite the disadvantage, the tide was beginning to turn. The Nohrian forces had absorbed the initial shock of the invasion and had regained their wits. Reinforcements were arriving, forming a defensive line around the gate. When he saw Silas ride in leading the cavalry, Niles knew the east gate would be secure. He turned and ran west.

The enemy had breached the gate, but there were fewer of them, it seemed, than he’d feared. Skirmishes had broken out across the castle courtyard, but they were small and unorganized. Directionless. What was their enemy after, and who had sent them? If they had a plan past wanton destruction, Niles couldn’t see it.

As Niles approached the gate, he saw what had cut their enemies numbers. A certain dragon was running through the invading forces, an elegant figure quite inelegantly trampling the enemy. For a moment, Niles felt his chest swell with something like pride. Then he noticed the wildness in Corrin’s movements, the faint shimmer of enemies slipping through gaps in his attention, how much space their allies had put between themselves and the dragon. Pride became dread—his husband was caught in the grip of madness.

 _Go to him_ , Niles thought, but no, that was a stupid, terrible idea. He wasn’t Azura. He didn’t know how to tame a dragon. Corrin was at the center of the battle, and he was doing fine work there. So long as there were enemies in front of him, he would probably be fine (Niles hoped). He had somewhere else to be.

The barracks were in chaos. Nohrian soldiers rudely awakened by catastrophe were dressed in half-armor or even less, crossing blades with an enemy they could barely see. Niles wove his way through the mess and into the barracks’ open doors. Some of the enemy’s number had pushed their way in. The bodies of soldiers cut down in the hallways. Blood across stone. He ran, but panic made a mockery of his legs. He stumbled over a corpse, not someone he knew, kept running. The nursery ahead of him, doors flung open.

The girls weren’t there.

Strength leaving him, Niles sank against the doorframe. He could not move his mind past the fact that they weren’t there. They were gone. He had failed. They were gone.

The meat of his fist slammed into the wall, the pain shaking his thoughts loose. No, they weren’t gone. They just weren’t here. That meant they had to be _somewhere_. He couldn’t freeze he had to pull himself together and think.

The room was, as far as he could tell, undisturbed. No signs of spilled blood or a struggle. They wouldn’t have been killed here. Captured? From what he had observed of the enemy’s blind destruction, that seemed unlikely. Maybe the enemy hadn’t made it this far into the barracks. Hadn’t there been fewer bodies the further in he’d run? Alright, so if they hadn’t been killed or captured, where were they? Think. Think! They would have woken up to the fighting, would have known the enemy was pushing its way in through the front door. Nina, where would you go?

Niles dashed out into the hallway, around the corner, up the stairs. Blood loud in his ears. He had never prayed before—if the gods did exist, they didn’t care much for him. But as he came to the top of the stairs, he found himself reaching out to something, anything. Please, please let him be right.

Niles stepped out onto the balcony and was very nearly stabbed.

He caught her wrist and the butter knife clicked off the stone floor. Nina stared up at him, her expression caught between a glare and a sob. Then she buried her face in the front of his shirt.

“Where _were_ you?” she demanded.

“I’m here now, aren’t I?” Niles said weakly, his hand cradling the back of her head. “You did good, getting yourself and your sister here. You did good.”

He heard a high-pitched whine and suddenly Kana was latched onto his leg, wailing into his knee.

“Hey, Kana, it’s alright. Shhh, we can’t cry right now. We don’t want anyone to know we’re here,” Niles cooed, trying to comfort her as he’d seen Corrin do so many times. He wished he could let her cry. He wished they could stay in this moment, just for a little while. But he still had a job to do.

Reluctantly, Niles separated himself from the girls and peered over the edge of the balcony. The battle was still going strong in the courtyard. He took a quick tally of his arrows—seventeen left. The enemy was difficult to see, but he had a clear view and time to track his shots. He’d make those seventeen arrows count.

“What’s that?” Nina asked. She and Kana had followed him to the edge of the balcony. She meant, of course, at the dragon rampaging in the courtyard.

“That’s your papa,” Niles said, ignoring Nina’s incredulous glare. “Now get back, you two. It’s dangerous here.”

He notched an arrow in his bow. Felt her eyes still upon him. Sighed.

Niles unclasped his cloak and wrapped it around the girls. The night was cool, and they were barefoot in their sleep clothes. Kana sniffed. Kneeling, he held them close once more. For their comfort or his, he didn’t know.

“This isn’t something you should see.”

“Why?”

“It just isn’t.” He stood, a rough feeling pulling at him. “The stars are beautiful tonight. Do you remember the constellations I taught you?”

Nina hesitated, nodded.

“Good.”

Niles returned to his perch at the edge of the balcony, bow drawn, and scanned the battlefield below. He saw a Nohrian soldier stagger backward, their sword raised to repel an incoming attack. Niles let his arrow fly. Had the snap of his bowstring always been so loud? He pulled the next arrow from his quiver. Took aim. Shot.

Seventeen impersonal deaths. Seventeen deaths delivered from the place he’d courted his husband, with two small children at his back. An impressive record, certainly. He should have felt proud. Instead he felt detached from himself, a bowstring with the snap gone out of it.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Holding his empty quiver, Niles considered going back down to the barracks. They must have a store of arrows there. But the thought paralyzed him—he couldn’t leave the girls alone on the balcony, nor could he risk bringing them down with him.

The battle was breaking up anyway. They had managed to barricade the breached portion of the gate, and Corrin had scattered the enemy’s main force. What remained of the enemy was scattered and confused. They would soon be hunted down and hacked to pieces, and then the battle would be over.

Niles watched as Corrin, deprived of targets, began to lash out at allies, buildings, trees, anything that stood before him. He watched as Camilla flew down, Azura in tow, and began to circle around his husband. He watched as Azura’s song reminded the dragon of its humanity. As the beast’s shape gave way to a man’s. As Silas rode in and carried his liege from the battlefield.

They’d won. They’d won, and the girls were safe. It was a victory, a success. Except it wasn’t. Niles was many things, but he wasn’t a fool. They’d won, yes, but they were going to pay for it, if they weren’t paying for it already.

Niles sat next to the girls, exhausted. His night wasn’t over yet. He needed to see that Corrin was alright. He needed to check in with Lord Leo. He needed to scout out the castle perimeter to flush out any enemies in hiding. And then there were the bodies—their enemies’ to be burned, their allies’ to be buried. He needed to do those things, but not yet.

Kana climbed over Nina and into his lap. He smoothed her hair and wiped her cold face. She had grown, he realized dimly, over the past month.

“Were you able to find Hasse?” he asked. Nina shook her head, and Niles tried to smile. He wanted to be able to tease her, to know that he still could. “Really? That’s the easiest one to find. You just follow Knokros, and—”

But when he looked up, he couldn’t see it either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It wasn't supposed to be like this. This fic wasn't supposed to get this long.


	7. Chapter 7

He woke muscle-sore in the infirmary, a tight ache in his shoulder.

“You were reckless.”

Azura sat at the side of his cot. She held herself very straight, her hands folded stiffly and intentionally in her lap. She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. Corrin had never seen her so furious. 

“I was,” he admitted. He sat up and felt the pinch of his wounds. Pain like shards of ice lancing through his shoulder. It was intense, and then it passed.

“Why weren’t you carrying your dragonstone.”

It wasn’t really a question.

“I…I forgot it. I woke up and we were already under attack. I just…I didn’t take it with me.”

It was a weak excuse. He doubted it himself.

“You can’t just _forget_ it,” Azura said. Through her anger, she had spoken calmly. But now her voice began to rise. “Corrin, I’m not always going to be there to bring you back!”

“You’re right,” Corrin said. He felt like he had swallowed a handful of gravel. “You shouldn’t even have been on the battlefield today. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have put you in that position. I’m so sorry.”

She softened toward him for a moment, her hand tightening the reins on her anger. But her voice remained cold.

“I will leave for the Deeprealms soon,” she said, pressing a hand to her still flat stomach. “I can’t say how long I will be gone. A couple of days, perhaps a week. Time runs differently there, like a swift undercurrent.”

Azura lowered her eyes.

“My offer stands. I can take you there. I can show you how to walk the path. They would be safe there. Hidden. They could grow up in peace.”

Corrin could not muster the energy for outrage this time. He hurt too much. He nodded. He felt like his head was floating.

“I’m sorry, Corrin. I know you didn’t want this.”

Corrin looked down at his knees. His pants were streaked with blood and dirt. Ruined, he thought. Unsalvageable. Azura was waiting for him to say something.  He was waiting on himself to say something. He opened his mouth. Closed it again.

What was there to say? What could he possibly say?

A long night turned into a long day. The gates needed to be repaired, as well as the mess hall, the armory, the barracks. The castle had taken a surprising amount of damage in such a short time. And of course, there were the casualties. Twenty-two infantry dead. Two horses that had had to be put down. Several commanders injured. For an army that had thus far fought a war of invasion, it was a grim reminder of what it was like to be on the defensive. Of what they had to lose.

That night Corrin moved Nina and Kana to his quarters. It was a wordless transition—by sunset, all of the girls’ things had been moved. What few things they owned, Corrin thought. Their lives could be easily folded into a small crate.

Corrin had put the girls to bed by the time Niles returned. Exhausted, they had fallen into sleep like two stones into water, and they did not wake when he entered, or when Corrin removed himself from their side.

“You’re late,” Corrin said mildly. He stroked the silver tail of Nina’s braid. “Look, I had to do this myself. It’s a mess.”

“Did she complain?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

Niles chuckled. He drew close to Corrin but did not embrace him. Instead, he tucked his head against Corrin’s uninjured shoulder and breathed in the warm smell of his nightshirt. They stood like that for a while, Niles’s breath tickling Corrin’s neck. Then Corrin put a hand on his husband’s arm, and they pulled apart.

“Let’s step outside,” he said.

The night was overcast, threatening rain. The light of the moon and stars veiled, they appeared vague to each other, shadows blunting their edges.

“All quiet beyond the castle walls?” Corrin asked.

“As the grave. We spent the entire day traipsing around the woods and jumping at our own footsteps. No sign of those soldiers, though. And hardly any tracks.”

“How could a force of that size not leave tracks?”

“Magic, perhaps?”

It was a plausible and disturbing thought. The invisible soldiers were, Leo had determined, of magical creation. The craft that had made them was similar, though not identical, to the techniques Nohrian mages had used to make the Faceless. Not that Corrin would put such craft or tactics past Iago. But the soldiers’ armor was of neither Nohrian or Hoshidian origin. Where, then, had they come from? Why? At whose command?

“Is your shoulder alright?” Niles asked.

“It’s attached.” Corrin pressed his fingers over where the bandages peeked out of his shirt. Even that light pressure made his wounds sing. He let his touch linger. “I’ll have some new scars, though.”

“Considering that you threw yourself at an entire army, a few isn’t bad.”

Niles meant it as a joke, but it wasn’t really. Neither of them laughed. Silence passed between them, the memory of the dragon and its rampage made fresh in their minds.

“Did they see me?” Corrin finally asked. Niles hesitated, and he had his answers. “Gods, they must have been terrified.”

“There were many things to be terrified of,” Niles said. He looked at Corrin, but Corrin had turned his face from him, hand gripping his injured shoulder. “They’re brave girls. If they saw you transform, if they knew it was you, they wouldn’t be afraid.”

“Shouldn’t they be?”

Corrin’s voice was calm and clipped with ice. Niles’s breath immediately sucked backward into his lungs.

“Corrin.”

“I was supposed to protect them, but I didn’t. I left my dragonstone behind. I couldn’t control myself. If you saw me, then you know how many people I killed. All that considered, they _should_ be afraid, and so should you. I know I am.”

Niles hadn’t felt afraid since the battle had ended. Dread, yes. Exhausted, yes. But not afraid. He’d spent most of the day under the heel of a heavy numbness. A placeholder for future feeling. But now, listening to Corrin, Niles realized that he _was_ afraid. Just not of the dragon.

“Corrin, you held down the west gate,” Niles said, trying to sound reasonable. Trying to put his own fear aside and say the right thing to soothe his husband. “ _They_ invaded _us_. Even if you forgot your dragonstone, you used your strength to protect us from the enemy. You had to kill them, yes, but they’re like the Faceless, like Lord Leo said. They’re not people. They don’t count.”

Finally, Corrin looked at him. In absence of starlight, his eyes were flat, reflecting nothing.

“I didn’t forget my dragonstone,” he said. Niles blinked back the darkness.

“But you did.”

“I did,” Corrin agreed. “But maybe I didn’t. I was in a rush to get to the battle, but I still grabbed Yato. My dragonstone was right there next to it. So why would I forget to take it unless there was a part of me that didn’t want to carry it?”

Corrin smiled brittlely. Vacantly. He looked serene in his certainty, like a perfectly formed teacup sailing through the air. The moment before it shattered itself against the wall.

“You said that those soldiers don’t count, and maybe you’re right. Maybe they are just dolls moved with magic. But I didn’t care about that then. I didn’t even think about it. When I turned into a dragon, I didn’t think about protecting our allies, or protecting Nina and Kana. All I could think of was killing the enemy. I _wanted_ to kill them, Niles, I did.”

It was awful to hear Corrin speak like that. Niles had known that there was an edge beneath Corrin’s gentleness, had known that it had the potential to cut through to the surface. It was that sharpness that had allowed Niles to trust him. They were alike in at least one way—their hearts were jagged, hurtful things. But Corrin had never embraced those cutting parts of himself. He tried to be forgiving. He tried to make himself kind. And although that had annoyed Niles, it had comforted him also. His beautiful, noble husband, always pretending to be better than he was.

He wasn’t comforted now.

“It’s perverse, isn’t it?” Corrin continued. “I wanted to protect Nina and Kana from the war, but I delivered them to the heart of it. I thought I could raise them, but I couldn’t even control myself. I never wanted them to see me like that. I never wanted them to see me as a monster.”

“They wouldn’t—” Niles began to say, then stopped. What was he supposed to say, that Corrin was wrong? On the balcony, during the battle, he’d thrown his cloak over the girls and told them to look at the stars while he killed. And he wasn’t like Corrin. He was neither beautiful nor noble, and he didn’t mind killing. But in that moment, he’d known just how ugly he was. He hadn’t wanted them to see.

“I feel like I’ve been living in a dream. A pleasant dream of a family that’s happy and whole. But it was selfish. I used those girls. I saved them only to put them in harm’s way again. I made them share the target on my back.”

“But you _did_ save them,” Niles insisted. His face was suddenly hot, and his head was full of noise. “You plucked them out of the gutter and made them a home. You gave them love and a new future, and they returned it. How is that selfish? If you think you’re using them, then fine—use them! They’ve been happy with you, maybe for the first time in their lives!”

Niles needed his words to reassure Corrin. Because it was true, wasn’t it? Despite the odds, despite his own misgivings, they had made something good together. Not perfect, not by a long shot, but good. More than anything, he needed Corrin to believe that it was good.

But Corrin was inconsolable. His composure fractured wholly into desperation.

“But it’s not enough!” he cried, his voice an upward spiral. “No matter what I do, it’s not enough! Nina, Kana, the war—I haven’t saved anything! If every choice I make just causes the people I love to suffer, then I wish I’d never…I wish I was—!”

Niles embraced him. Not out of love. He was terrified.

“Don’t,” he said. “You’re hurting me. Please don’t.”

He needed to hold him down. To feel the certainty of his body against him, the rabbiting of his heart next to his own. To keep his weight on him. To keep him together. To keep him.

Corrin didn’t fight him. He slackened into Niles and let himself be covered, let himself be given over. This was fine, Niles thought, wasn’t it? This could be enough. So long as he held him, they couldn’t hurt each other or anyone else. They could remain like this. And if he held him long enough, then maybe they would someday come to fit against each other. All of their edges matched and harmless. Their separateness resolved into a single point of light.

“Please let go.”

The panic had drained out the bottom of him, and Corrin spoke as if without blood. Niles’s arms dropped to his side. He took a step back, and all at once he saw it—the dead space unfolding itself. A lifetime of distance until the nearest light. He had wanted too much the things he was never meant to have. He had only wanted to touch.

“It isn’t safe for the Nina and Kana to stay here. If we were discovered once, then we could be discovered again. If Garon were to find out about the girls, he would be merciless. He would find a way to steal them, just as he stole me. He would dangle them over our heads. He would hurt them in order to hurt me, and I would be powerless against him.”

It made sense in the way power made sense of things—messily and with no small degree of cruelty. Of course there would be spies. Of course the king would use the girls to keep Corrin under his thumb. Anything could be taken, which meant there was no keeping anything. Niles understood that better than he understood anything. It had been his life’s education. But despite everything he knew, he’d thought things might be different for them. He’d wanted so much for them to be.

He’d been a fool.

“In a couple of days, Azura will depart for other realms to have her child. Realms that are safer, deeper, more hidden than this one. She’s offered to show us the way. I’ve made my choice”

Of course it couldn’t be different. Different how? Who had he been kidding? For the briefest of moments, he had gotten his hands on something that was truly precious. And now it would be taken from him. It was as simple, as predictable, as that. The world was the same as it had always been.

He was the same as he had always been.

“I’m sorry,” Corrin said. “But you don’t have to forgive me. I don’t think they will.”

Niles shook his head, but he knew Corrin was right. If there was any damn forgiveness in this world, it wouldn’t be spent on them. They wouldn’t be spared. They would remain unchanged, as broken and wretched as they had always been.

Well, if that was how it had to be, then so be it.

He was tired of asking for forgiveness anyway.

 

They left the next morning with two horses and a covered wagon. Some food, some blankets. The girls’ small trunk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops it took me a month to write a not very long chapter.


	8. Chapter 8

2.

 

Her first memory is of birds.

A dusty feathered pigeon pecking at a crust of bread in the marketplace dirt. A dumpy thing. Stupid, flat eyes. The smell of vegetables rotting in the sun. Exchanges of voices and coin.

And then—a ripple of wings. A sparrow, common as anything, snatching the bread from beneath the pigeon’s dull beak. Away with its prize quick as it came. A triumph of the small. The pigeon staring at the empty dirt.

 

4.

 

Kana is crying again. She is crying because she is hungry. She is putting everything in her mouth because she is hungry.

Mama is sleeping. She is tired and she doesn’t want to feed Kana. She has thrown the blanket over her head. She is always tired now.

Nina softens a piece of bread in her palm to give to Kana, but it’s still too hard. Her sister has four teeth and they are very small. Fat tears are rolling down her face and she’s screaming and screaming. She needs to stop her screaming. She needs to let Mama sleep, or else she is a bad child.

Nina holds the bread in her mouth. Chews once, twice. She wants to swallow it because she is also hungry, but she doesn’t. She spits out the bread, soft now, and pushes it into Kana’s red mouth.

 

5.

 

Mama’s gone and so is their room. She said Papa would come, but he didn’t. Last night she and Kana slept in a doorway. They have no more bread.

The marketplace is full of people and fruit. Nina sinks among the trousers and skirts, the carts stacked with cabbages, turnips, bags of beans. She draws near the baker’s cart, but a keen-eyed woman with fat knuckles shoos her away.

Hunger coils tightly in the basket of her stomach.

A man is yelling with a customer about apples. Nina knows this man. He’s yelled at mama before and she hates him. She hates his scrawny mustache. His stupid, flat eyes. She inches closer to his cart, but he doesn’t notice her. He is jabbing fingers with his customer and not looking at his apples.

She makes her hands into sparrows. She will do so again and again.

 

6.

 

The man with kind hands and sad eyes is covered in blood. Nina wants to trust him. She has no choice. The marketplace is on fire and Kana fell while they were running. The man picks up Kana. He holds his hand out to her, and she follows him.

 

The man with one eye is not a nice man. He smiles like a mean cat. Nina doesn’t like him, but she likes being around him. The quickness of his hands as he twists her hair into plaits reminds her of her own. She adores Corrin. She has said the word “Papa” outside of his hearing, just to try it. But she knows she is not alone. Corrin belongs to everyone, and mostly to Kana. But this one, this bastard man. He’s hers.

 

It’s a strange thing to see them together. It’s always an arm around the shoulder or the hip, a brush of lips, fingers tangled like branches in the wind. The bastard man’s hands are supposed to be like hers, but when he touches him, they become gentle. She has never seen two people touch like this. She didn’t know they could.

They’re at a lake, having spent the morning hiking through an empty forest. Kana is kicking at shallow water, and the bastard man is keeping his eye on her, just in case. Then Corrin is behind him, lowering his head onto the bastard man’s back. Wrapping his arms around his waist, and Nina sees the bastard man flinch at being grabbed from behind. Then the wrinkle in him smooths, and he covers Corrin’s hands with his own.

They are so sweet together and Nina feels desolate. She wants to slot herself between their arms, into the middle of their love. Her hands itch for something to grab, so she picks up a rock and lobs it into the lake. The splash it makes is tiny and inobtrusive. She finds more rocks, bigger rocks, and throws them too. She does this until they tell her to stop.

 

She likes the new house more than the castle. It’s not like any house she’s ever seen before, with its grass roof and straw floors. But its windows are wide, and it has so many rooms. There are no walls around it either, just open fields and forested mountains. And they all sleep under the same roof.

It’s a thrilling change. She and Kana spend the first few days poking around the new house and running through the fields with the village children who come around to see the new family. They find bugs they’ve never seen before. The other children teach her how to scamper up into a tree, but Kana’s too young to do it well, so she starts crying and Nina has to come down to comfort her. One night, they find a lizard in the house and the bastard man catches it with his bare hands.

It’s a worrying change. Nina doesn’t ask why they’ve moved, but she can guess. Every day Papa goes to the village, and when he comes back he talks to the bastard man in hushed tone so she and Kana can’t hear. He looks sad all the time now. He still smiles for her, but it’s a tired smile. He does not look at all like a man who can turn into a dragon. She thinks that the bastard man lied to her. She asks Papa to show her, but he won’t.

“This is a peaceful land without kings or dragons,” he explains. “I want to keep it that way.”

She doesn’t know what a king is or what they have to do with dragons, but the smile Papa gives her makes Nina feel so guilty that she doesn’t ask him to transform again.

The bastard man is no better. He is quieter than she’s seen him, and he doesn’t tease her as much. He touches Papa less. He gets up at night when he thinks the rest of them are asleep and sits out on the porch to look at the sky. His back looks broad and lonely. Sometimes she joins him on the porch. They don’t say anything, and most of the time he hardly acknowledges that she’s there. He lets her fall asleep against his shoulder, though, and when she wakes, she’s always tucked into bed.

 

Papa starts bringing adults from the village to the house. He introduces them, has them spend a couple of hours around her and Kana. Some of them he sends away, but some of them begin to sleep in the extra rooms. They start preparing Nina and Kana’s meals for them. They take their laundry to the river. They flood the fields and scatter seeds over them. Nina observes these developments with apprehension.

She is right to.

 

They say that they will leave at the end of the month and that Nina and Kana will live here. That they will visit as often as they can, but time works funny here, so it may be awhile until they come back. That they are doing this to protect them. That they want them to grow up happy and safe.

Kana is miserable. Nina is furious and miserable. For days she refuses to talk to either of them. She hopes this hurts them. She wants them to be sorry. Her silent protest runs through each of her actions and follows her into every room of the house. But they are unmoved, neither scolding nor comforting her.

 _Liars_ , she thinks. _Liars, liars, liars._

 

More and more she catches the bastard man looking at her like she’s an open window. She hates when he does this. It makes it seem like he’s already gone.

She’s out digging stones out of the yard when he calls her over to the porch. She comes to him, but grudgingly. She takes heavy steps. Stops. Looks everywhere that he isn’t. He waits for her, his face hard as earth. When she finally reaches the porch, he has her sit down facing the fields. By now, the seeds have sprouted into fragile shoots.  

He loosens her braids and combs her hair with his fingers. She’ll never tell him this, but she enjoys his preening. She enjoys the sound of his hands smoothing her hair, the gentle tug against her scalp as he fusses at a tangle. For a little while she forgets her anger.

Then his hands stop and she remembers.

“I’m going to teach you how to braid your own hair,” he says.

It’s like he’s thrown cold water in her face.

“No.”

“It isn’t hard. Look.”

He holds up a lock of her hair, but she turns her head away and refuses to see.

“No,” she says again. He sighs, and she can feel the friction in his breath. She hates how patient he’s being. He was never patient with her before! She wants to turn around and push him over. Pound her fists into him until he pushes back.

“You have to learn how,” he says steadily. “I’m not going to braid your hair forever.”

“Then just go!” she yells. “If you’re gonna go anyhow, then go! I’ve never needed you around!”

His breath hitches. She’s done it now, she’s done it. Nina squeezes her eyes shut and waits for his hands to fall on her, but they don’t.

“Alright,” he says. He walks off the porch and toward the fields. Nina keeps waiting for him to stop or to look back. Suddenly she’s scrambling to her feet, terrified.

“Wait!” she cries. “Come back! I didn’t mean it!”

But he keeps walking.

 

7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

 

They’re away most of the year. When they return, they stay for weeks at a time. They try to pick up where they left off, but it’s hard. They bring clothes for her that don’t fit. They mention things she did or said years ago like it was yesterday.

“You’re growing up so fast,” Papa says. It doesn’t feel like that to her.

The rice grows and ripens. The arrive and they depart, and each time the loss falls hard.

 

The days are long when they’re not there. Their caretaker, Mayu, teaches Nina and Kana their letters. The learning is tedious, but the letters themselves are not. Nina reads everything Mayu puts in front of her, and when she runs out of things to read, she reads everything over again.

“You have such a hungry mind!” Mayu exclaims. “If only your sister shared your appetite.”

Mayu is a short woman with flat, strong hands. She has wide eyebrows and always keeps her black hair tied up. She is older than Papa, but not by much. When Nina first met her, she hadn’t liked her much. Looking at her made her remember Mama. But Mayu is nothing like Mama. She doesn’t forget to feed Nina and Kana, and sometimes she worries that they aren’t eating enough. She takes them into the forest to pick mushrooms and teaches them which things are good to eat. These berries, these weeds, never ever those.

When Mayu goes home to the village on her day off, Nina misses her. She worries that one day Mayu will go home and not come back.

 

Every time he visits, Papa takes Nina and Kana aside to where none of the housekeepers can hear. He asks them quietly if any of the housekeepers have mistreated them while he’s been away.

“If they have, tell me who they are, and I will send them away. You’re not in trouble,” he says.

It’s a difficult question, and Nina does not really understand it. Last month, she ruined a bunch of turnips by running through them, and Nobu, the gardener, had scolded her and made her replant them all herself. But she doesn’t think Papa is talking about things like that, so every time he asks, she tells him “no.” She doesn’t want anyone else to be sent away.

“Why does he ask us that?”

She thinks Mayu will be able to explain. She doesn’t want to ask Papa because she’s worried it will upset him, like when she asked him to turn into a dragon. Besides, Mayu seems to know everything. She sits quietly, her wide eyebrows troubled with thought.

“There are some people who shouldn’t be around children,” she says at last. “I think your father understands that better than most.”

It’s not a complete answer, but it seems rights, so Nina accepts it anyway.

 

The bastard man brings her a bow on his second visit. It is smaller than the one she’s seen him use, but still big in her hands. He shows her how to hold it, firm, but not overly tight, how to notch an arrow. They go out and shoot at trees. He doesn’t correct her posture—he wants her to be able to shoot from anywhere. The “just in case” goes unsaid.

“A bow isn’t a fair weapon,” he tells her. “There’s nothing noble about shooting an enemy from a distance. But it’s effective. Better than a butter knife, at least. Good for protecting noble idiots, too.”

Nina likes these lessons, although she doesn’t care so much about archery. She likes spending time with him that doesn’t require much talking. More and more they don’t know what to say to each other, and it’s hard to see him work to come up with conversation. She’s noticed that he doesn’t really know how to talk to people. It’s easier when they’re in the woods, and it’s quiet except for the sound of something sharp splitting the air.

She regrets telling him to go away all those years ago, but she doesn’t know how to tell him. She thinks he’ll know if she trains hard while he’s away. So she practices until her arms grow sore and hard with budding muscle. She practices until she can hit a bullseye while standing still, then while jogging. It feels good to hold a bow. It reminds her of him.

She practices so much that Kana gets bored of her. She tries to pull Nina away from her practice, hanging off of her arm as she pulls the arrow back.

“C’mon, let’s do something else, please? Let’s go to the village! Let’s do something fun, Nina, can’t we? We never do anything fun anymore.”

 

12.

 

Nina and Kana are coming home from catching fish in the river when they see the bird. It’s coming in low over the fields, and it’s much bigger than the crows they usually see flying at dusk. The sight is so odd that they both stop. Perhaps it’s a crane? But as it flies closer, it gets bigger and bigger. They see what it is, and that it’s going to crash into the fields, and they start running.

They get there when the dragon hits the ground, crushing the half-grown rice under its belly and splattering mud onto its white scales. The dragon tries to get to its feet, but collapses, huffing in pain. Nina’s heart plummets. She shoves the wet bundle of fish into Kana’s chest.

“Go get Mayu,” she instructs. “Get everyone.”

Kana is wide-eyed scared, but she nods and sprints toward the house fast as she’s ever been. Leaving Nina alone with the dragon.

The dragon’s tail slams into the earth, and Nina tells herself that she doesn’t have to be afraid. She takes a step forward, her legs trembling.

“Papa?” she says. The dragon responds with a low rumble that Nina thinks is friendly. It lies still, letting her come closer, and she sees the thing that brought it down.

A long, saw-toothed sword lies buried behind the dragon’s front leg.

She puts a hand on the dragon’s nose to steady herself and is surprised by how cold its skin is. Her papa was always warm.

“Can’t you change back?” she all but whispers. The dragon doesn’t respond. Nina cannot make out its eyes, but she can feel it staring at her.

“Oh my goodness!”

Nina turns and sees Mayu, hand over her mouth, Kana and the rest of the housekeepers behind her. This is a land without dragons, Nina remembers. Well, it is now.

“It’s Papa!” Nina yells. “He’s hurt!”

Mayu hesitates, then comes to her side. She puts a hand on Nina’s shoulder, as if doing so could stop the dragon from snapping at her. She takes one look at the sword and hisses through her teeth.

“That’s going to be hell to take out,” she says. “But out it needs to come. Nobu, bring those towels here! There’s going to be a lot of blood once we take that sword out. Nina, step back a little. Don’t stand too close to his mouth.”

Nobu brings the towels, but before they can touch the sword, there’s a flash of light and the dragon is melting away, the sword falling innocently from its side. Papa’s lying in the ruined rice field, and Mayu was right. There is a lot of blood.

 

It takes him weeks to recover, but he does recover. The wound was not as deep as it looked on the dragon, but he is lucky that the sword did not pierce his heart.

It’s shaky at first. He lies in a fever for days, barely able to wake up. Kana rarely leaves his side, but Nina does. She can hardly bear to see him like that. Then he wakes up, and the entire household breathes a sigh of relief.

“I was careless,” he explains to her, as if the injury is his fault. “I thought I could break through the Hoshidian line as a dragon, but they were ready for me. They wouldn’t fall for the same trick twice.”

Nina is amazed that he tells her this. He has never spoken so directly about the war before. But the bastard man isn’t here, and he must need someone to tell. She’s not the child she was, either. She has glimpsed what he’d tried to shield her from, and there’s no going back.

She pushes for more information a few days later when Mayu is giving Kana her bath. He’s sitting up in bed, slowly eating a bowl of rice soup. Each time he raises his arm, he grimaces, but he insists on feeding himself. In dark robes, he looks very dignified and austere.

He puts his bowl down when she enters the room. She scoots next to his bed, and he starts raising his hand to pat her on the head, then stops. She thinks his wound is hurting him, but he smiles sheepishly at her.

“Maybe you’re too old for that,” he says. He’s right, of course. But she can’t help but feel disappointed.

“Does it hurt a lot?” she asks. It isn’t a good question, but she’s not ready to ask the question she wants to.

“It hurts a little,” Papa admits. “That salve Mayu made dulled most of the pain. It’s more stiff than anything now.”

Nina knows that salve. Mayu used to use it on her skinned knees. It doesn’t work _that_ well.

“Do you always get hurt this bad?”

She watched Mayu dress his wound. He had more scars than she’d expected.

“Not this badly, no,” he says. “But that sword they had was made to saw through dragon skin. I didn’t think they’d have one. I’ll have to remember that when I go back.”

“But what if you didn’t go back,” Nina says, quickly before she loses courage. “You could stay here and not worry about being stabbed with a dragon-killing sword. I’ve gotten really good with a bow, you know. I could protect you, and you wouldn’t have to turn into a dragon anymore.”

She’s thought about this all week, and it seems like a reasonable solution. It Papa never wants to return to his own realm, then he should just stay in hers. If Papa gets hurt when he fights, he shouldn’t fight. But as she speaks, she can see him closing his face to her.

“Thank you, Nina,” he says. “But I have to go back.”

“Why,” she demands.

“Why…” She watches him recall the reasons. “Well, for one thing, my allies don’t know I’m here. I fled the battlefield as soon as I was stabbed. If I don’t go back, they’ll think I’m dead or captured. Your father is probably terrified right now.” 

“Then go get him and come back.”

“I’d like to do that, Nina. And I will come back soon, but I can’t stay. I can’t make my friends fight the war alone.”

“I hate the war,” she says hotly. It’s a childish thing to say, but it’s true. The Hoshidan war is a horrible thing on the periphery of her life. It steals her parents away for months and spits them out with new scars and sorrows.

“I hate it too,” Papa says. “That’s why I have to fight.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We’ve done our best to shelter you from having to understand. The conflict between Nohr and Hoshido is…messy and personal to me. I have been used as a means to deepen that conflict, my choices completely taken away.”

He looks her in the eyes, his expression steady.

“The king of Nohr, my adoptive father, used me as a weapon to assassinate my mother,” he says, his voice low. “After that, I vowed to myself that this war would be the last between Nohr and Hoshido, no matter what the sacrifice. That doesn’t make the war just or excusable. It only means that it has a purpose—one that I’m willing to fight for.”

She has never heard him speak like this, and for the first time he appears to her not just as her gentle Papa, but as a prince, resolute and noble. He is realer, more beautiful, to her now than he has ever been.

“But you could die,” she whispers. “You almost did.”

“I could,” he agrees. He doesn’t qualify his words, and she is all the more in awe of him. She begins to cry.

“Oh Nina. Come here.”

He hugs her to his chest, and she knows she shouldn’t let him—it’ll disturb his injury. But she can’t bring herself to pull away. For only a minute, she just wants to be a little girl crying into her Papa’s shirt.

“I was so scared,” she sobs, and he hugs her even tighter.

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

 

13.

 

Papa leaves her realm when his wounds have mostly healed. In his absence, Kana obsesses over dragons. She scribbles them over her writing lessons until Mayu scolds her for wasting paper and ink, then she etches them into the dirt with a pointed stick—lanky, sharp creatures that look more like winged cats than dragons. She jumps from small ledges, flapping her arms, hoping she’ll sprout wings. And, of course, she talks Nina’s ear off about dragons.

“Why didn’t you _tell_ me Papa was a dragon?” she asks, and Nina doesn’t know what to tell her. She can’t explain the look Papa gave her when she asked him to transform. She can’t explain what the dragon means to Papa. So she shrugs.

“He turned into a dragon when the castle got invaded. I thought you would remember.”

“That was forever ago!” Kana says, as if it’s Nina’s fault that she can’t remember. Nina rolls her eyes and aims her bow. The arrow sinks dead center into the tree. Unsatisfied, Kana flops into the grass next to her. “Do you think I could turn into a dragon?” she asks. Nina notches another arrow.

“Probably not.”

She can hear Kana frowning, but it was the truth. Nina doesn’t know why Papa can turn into a dragon, but whatever it is, Kana doesn’t have it. She’d know otherwise.

“Can I use your bow?” Kana asks, already bored of sulking.

“No,” Nina replies predictably.

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“Because _why_?”

“Because he gave it to _me_ and didn’t say you could use it.”

Now Kana is indignant. She sits up in a huff, grass sticking to the back of her head.

“Dad didn’t say I _couldn’t_ use it!”

“Then you can ask him yourself the next time he comes.”

“That’s not _fair_!” Kana protests. Nina shrugs.

Plenty of things weren’t fair.

 

Papa returns a few months later, as he promised. But the bastard man is not with him.

“He’s been assigned to a mission,” Papa explains. “He may not be able to come for a while.”

It is entirely unacceptable, but Nina has no choice but to swallow her anger. Papa seems angry too, although he does his best to mask it. But he’s not like her, he’s not used to being away from him. In less than a week his anger dissolves into loneliness, and it’s terrible to see. He looks sad. He looks like a man who doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

Nina hates that Papa can feel lonely when they’re together. She curses the bastard man for not being here.

Kana predictably takes up most of Papa’s time. She has never outgrown her clinginess, but this time she’s practically attached to his hip pestering him about dragon things. She asks him to transform, and to Nina’s dismay, he does. Later, she’s able to rationalize why he agreed to transform—he had already appeared as a dragon in this realm once before, and Kana had been much more persistent in asking than she had.

Still, it stings.

 

She’s doing laundry at the river when she sees a couple of boys from the village. She knows them, but still she picks up her wet basket and hides behind a bush. Ever since she took up archery, she hasn’t spent much time with the village kids, and without her sister, she’s awkward around them. She never knows the right thing to say.

The boys are up stream and they don’t see her. She hopes they will move on so she can finish the laundry, but they don’t. One stoops down to splash water on his face, and the other one pushes him into the shallows. The boy retaliates, and as they splash each other, Nina feels her legs begin to stiffen from crouching. She wants to get up, but she doesn’t want to be seen.

Then one of the boys falls, and as he does, he pulls the other down with him. They land in a flailing of limbs, and when the water settles, one boy is pinning the other down. A moment of stillness passes between them. Then they get up, laughing. They wring out their shirts, shake the water from their hair, and move on.

Nina stays hidden behind the bush a good while after they leave. Then she picks up her basket and sprints home. She leaves the laundry at the door, and one of the housekeepers will surely find it and scold her, but that doesn’t matter now. She rummages for the journal that Mayu gave her on her last birthday. _For recording your thoughts_ , she had said, which had seemed silly at the time. She fumbles with the ink and reed pen. She writes what she saw at the river. She embellishes. She makes it a story about love.

 

She imagines love.

She imagines it as a room she is outside of.

She steals glances through its windows. She is sustained for days by the brush of a hand, a smile, a laugh.

For the first time in years, she feels in her hands a familiar fluttering. But what she wants she cannot grab.

 

14.

 

The bastard man doesn’t come this year.

 

15.

 

Or the next.

 

16.

 

The wyvern’s face cracks open into teeth and Nina recoils. Kana doesn’t. She laughs, returning the beast’s display of teeth with her own.

“Really?!” she squeals. “Really, Auntie Camilla?!”

Their aunt, that hazy, doting figure from ten years ago, chuckles. She pats the wyvern’s neck and a rumble rises out of its chest.

“If you think you can handle him, sweetheart.”

Kana looks to Papa. Nina does too, because he certainly isn’t going to allow this. But he nods, smiling nervously. Kana launches herself at him, and she’s tall enough now that she nearly knocks him off his feet.

“Thank you, Papa! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Auntie Camilla takes Kana on her first wyvern ride while Nina sits with Papa on the porch. They watch the huge creature lurch through the air. The wyvern flight is neither graceful nor effortless, but a feat of sheer muscle and form.

“Don’t you want to join them?” Nina asks.

“I’m a poor flier, actually. I’ve never even tried going that high.”

“I can’t believe she wore you down.”

Papa sighs. “She just seemed to get so lonely,” he says. Then he thinks better of it. “I’m sorry, Nina. You must get lonely too.”

Nina shrugs and kicks at the dirt. “Not really,” she lies.

Papa gives her a look, but he doesn’t pry. It’s almost more awkward that he doesn’t. _He_ would have pushed her, she thinks, then regrets it. _He_ hasn’t bothered to come here. Papa has. She looks at the profile of his face and is suddenly struck by how young he looks. She’s catching up to him, Nina realizes in terror.

“So,” she says to fill the silence. “Did you win the war yet?”

“No, not yet.”

“I’m still quite good with a bow,” Nina reminds him.

“You don’t want to be part of this,” he says, and he’s right. She doesn’t. But she wants to be part of _something_. More than Kana, she’s the one who wants to fly away.

The wyvern bellows and they both tense, ready to leap up. But it’s simply the thrill of flight, and they settle again, their hearts pounding hard.

 

This time, when Papa leaves, she follows him. At a distance of course, silently. It’s something she’s gotten quite good at.

It’s a shorter path through the woods than she’d expected, hardly twenty minutes. It had seemed like a longer journey when she’d first come here all those years ago. She watches as he walks to the low stone wall. She and Kana must have run past it a thousand times. An old, crumbling wall that kept nothing in or out, or so they’d thought.

He stands at the wall a moment, and Nina wonders if he’ll look back. If he does, he might see her—she hasn’t tried very hard to hide herself. But he doesn’t. He reaches his hand out, as if feeling the air for something. Then he sets foot over the wall and disappears.

 

Kana names the wyvern Trout. It’s a dumb name, and Nina says so, but Kana doesn’t care. She loves that big lizard more than she loves anything. She spends all day with it, and sometimes sleeps nights in its stable. This flummoxes Mayu. She scolds Kana for not sleeping inside, but she cannot quite work up the courage to fetch her from the stable.

“That girl,” she clucks disapprovingly. “Sometimes I worry about that one.”

Mayu has never worried that way over Nina. She hasn’t had much reason to.

Of course, Nina worries too. She’s been worrying after Kana her whole life. And as annoying as her sister often is, she notices when she stops following her to archery practice. The forest is a quiet place without her conversation. Nina tries to learn to like it.

 

17.

 

It’s the middle of the night when Kana flops into bed. She elbows Nina on accident, and Nina swats at her instinctively.

“Watch it!”

“Sorry.”

“What are you even doing here?” Nina asks, as if they haven’t shared a room for the past eleven years. Practically speaking, they haven’t for the past couple months.

“Trout has indigestion,” Kana explains. “He keeps farting, and the entire stable smells like bad cabbage.”

“You’re so gross,” Nina scoffs. Kana giggles. She stretches. Her sister is almost as tall as she is. Nina turns over and tries to fall back asleep.

“Hey,” Kana whispers to the dark.

“What?”

“Do you remember that time Dad and Papa took us to the village? The empty one outside the castle? We all ate lunch together in a house?”

Of course she remembers. It was one of their first outings together.

“Kind of,” Nina says.

“What was the name of the orange fruit we ate? I can’t remember.”

Nina remembers that fruit. It was like a peach, but not exactly a peach. Dry, chewy, and slightly sweet. Beyond that she can’t remember its flavor. That fruit doesn’t grow here.

“I think it was an ‘apricot,’” she says. “Why?”

“Dunno. I’ve just been thinking about it.” A moment of silence. “I guess I miss Dad.”

Now Nina’s really awake. And she’s angry. She presses her teeth together and lies very still. She feels Kana shift her weight toward her, expectant.

“Do you think he’ll come this year?”

“No.”

“Oh. I wish he would.”

Bastard, Nina thinks. That absolute bastard.

“But you know what? That’s alright,” Kana says. “I miss him, but I’m alright.” She nudges closer until her shoulder bumps against Nina’s back. “I guess I wanted you to know that.”

 

In the end, the decision is not hard. Though this realm has been her home for over ten years, it is not a place she can remain.

She rips a page from her notebook and writes a letter to Mayu, but it’s very bad, so she writes another. And another, and another. She writes five letters before she gives up. She doesn’t know how to explain herself, and even if she could, she doubts it would make Mayu feel better.

She travels light. Even after years of living in comfort, she hasn’t accumulated many possessions. She takes a change of clothes, a hairbrush, her bow and quiver, a small knife, her notebooks. And she takes food from the pantry after the rest of the house has gone to sleep. And although she tells herself that it’s not theft, not really, her hands shake the entire time. But they get the job done.

She runs to the wall, although she knows she has not been followed. She likes the feeling of dark air pumping through her chest. Besides, it would feel wrong to walk. 

When she gets to the wall, she pauses. She takes a seat on the low stones facing the direction of the house, though she can’t see it through the trees. The moon is high, and the woods are full of its light. Crickets chitter at each other. Some small creature trots through the underbrush.

She will not see that house again, she thinks. Or maybe she will. Maybe she’ll return one day and find everything weathered and broken by time, the people she grew up with long since gone.

She should feel sad about leaving. And she will. One day, she’ll look back on the night she left this realm and wonder at her foolishness. Setting off alone in the middle of the night without a plan, with only a flimsy knowledge of how to walk the path between realms. She will regret not saying goodbye to Mayu, Nobu, or any of the people who cared for her in some small way or another. Even a poorly written letter, no matter how embarrassing, would have been better than nothing.

But that’s in the future. Now, she stands and brushes her braids over her shoulders. She straightens her cloak and holds her pack firm. Then she steps over the wall and exits quietly from this world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, the Nina chapter! When I started writing this fanfic three years ago, I imagined that the story would end here (it's not). I also thought this fic would be a tight five chapters long (it's not). Well.


	9. Chapter 9

Country for miles and miles. Nina trudged alongside a sludgy river, and for two days, the sun didn’t shine. Dense woods and dry meadows. Storms that were as violent as they were brief. She drank the rain because she didn’t trust the river water, but the rain didn’t taste as it should. It was sour. She drank it anyway. What choice did she have?

_This is Papa’s kingdom_? she thought. _This?_

She quickly learned that Nohr was a hard land that gave little. It was tiring to travel. The ground would shift from rock-studded to marshy, sinking her ankle-deep in mud. The plants were nettlely and mean, and the little fruit they grew looked poisoned. The path was daunting, but not hopeless. Nina knew how to take care of herself. Although the rations she’d packed were dwindling fast, she had seen fish squirming in the river, so she wasn’t afraid of starving.

On the second evening, Nina came to a village. It was in poor shape, and nothing like the village she’d grown up near. The houses were heavy, cobbled things of dark stone, and their thatched roofs sagged under the bad weather. The fields were more mud than crop, and the chickens look weak-legged. She considered passing the village by. She doubted the people of such a thin looking place would offer much in the way of hospitality. But there was another storm rolling in, and she didn’t want to spend another night soaked through.

She waited in the trees until the village had gone to sleep. Then she crept her way into a shed. A knobby-kneed donkey stared at her miserably before turning its patched head away, resigning itself to share its already small space.

“I’m not thrilled about this either,” Nina assured the sad beast. The shed smelled worse than a wyvern stable. But she had slept in worse places, so she tried to find the driest corner and settle in.

Before she could get too comfortable, there was a candle thrust in her face.

“You’re sleeping in my shed,” the girl said. She was small, around Kana’s height, though she looked a bit older. Hair the color of ripe rice haloing a finely cut face.

“Technically, it’s the donkey’s shed,” Nina said, disappointed at being found out so immediately.

“You’re sleeping in my donkey’s shed, then.”

“I guess.”

The girl looked her over, her fine lips pursed into a fine line under her fine nose. “I haven’t seen you before,” she said.

“I haven’t seen you before either,” Nina replied. She wished the girl would hurry up and kick her out so she could try to find another dry place before the rain really started. Instead, the girl drew her candle back.

“Wouldn’t you rather sleep inside?” she asked.

“Um,” Nina said, but the girl was already pulling Nina out of the hay, her hands hard as flat stones. She led her into the house and to her pallet. She folded Nina’s cloak into a pillow, pulled the blanket over them, and blew out the candle. Her body was a damp warmth, surprising and solid.

“My name’s Nina,” Nina offered. She felt like she should offer something in exchange for shelter. The girl next to her shifted. The narrow pallet barely held the both of them, but it did.

“I’m Colette.”

 

Colette with her father in a small, cold house. She used to have a mother too, but well. Because she didn’t have siblings, her father worked more than he should at his age. Nina hadn’t known fathers could be so old. Colette’s father was twice as old as Papa at least, maybe three times as old. But he was a strong man, big as a boulder, and kind, too. Because Colette wished it, he let Nina sleep under his roof and eat at his table.

Colette was a girl of many whims. She spent the majority of her waking moments dreaming, so she and Nina got along.

“I saw you hiding in the trees, and I thought you might be a forest nymph,” she confessed to Nina. “I was hoping you were, but I’m not disappointed. Unless…well, are you a nymph or fairy? Actually, don’t answer that please. Even if you were, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell me.”

Colette asked so many questions about where Nina was from that even Nina began to wonder if she was a nymph after all. The more she thought about the deep realm, the less real it seemed. A pocket of land outside time? Even a dreamy country girl wouldn’t believe that. So Nina told Colette enough truth to seem believable—she had run away from home, which was elsewhere, a long way from this village. Colette loved Elsewhere, with its plentiful fields and clear water. Nina admitted that it hadn’t been so bad on the whole.

Nina didn’t stay with Colette and her father for free, of course. She was expected to work, and unlike food, there was plenty of that to go around. In the morning they worked their own fields, and at noon they went to work the western fields. The work wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to Nina, who was used to helping with the rice planting and harvests. But she didn’t understand how the villagers could work so hard and still be so poor, or why the villagers had to work the western fields, which were far from their homes. Colette needed to explain this arrangement several times, and still Nina didn’t understand. She knew about princes and kings and the war games they played, but lords were another matter entirely. Her realm hadn’t had any.

“I still don’t get why having a special name means you have to work on his fields,” Nina confessed. She was sitting with Colette on their pallet, letting her brush her hair. “If it’s his land, then _he_ should work it.”

Colette shook her head. “All of this land is his. He lets us live on it.”

“How is it his? How did he get it?”

“The land was his birthright. He inherited it from his father.”

“And how did his father get it?” Nina pressed.

“He got it from his father, I guess.”

“That’s not a good answer.”

“Maybe not to you, but you’re not from here,” Colette said matter-of-factly.

“You shouldn’t have to work land the lord doesn’t let you eat from,” Nina insisted. “You should just stop working for him.”

“Oh, we can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Well, he’d have us killed.”

That gave something Nina to puzzle over. She was not unfamiliar with violence, but she hadn’t given much thought to why people killed. She understood why her Papa did it, but this was different. Killing people for not working fields that weren’t theirs seemed bratty and small.

“But wait, that doesn’t make sense,” Nina finally said. “I thought he needs you to work for him. You can’t work if you’re dead.”

“Huh.” The brush stopped halfway down Nina’s back as Colette thought. “I guess he couldn’t kill all of us. But he would likely kill a couple and make life intolerable for us.”

“It already seems pretty intolerable to me.”

“Listen to you,” Colette said as she began to plait Nina’s hair. “You sound like Jol.”

 

Jol was a couple of years older than Nina and taller than any boy she had ever seen. As a consequence of his height, he couldn’t help but look down on people. There was a strictness in his face that had not yet been worn to weariness, and he didn’t joke of jostle like the boys Nina had grown up around. He held himself very straight and looked as if he had never played a game of tag in his life. This made people respect him, despite the dangerous things he said.

“Don’t take Jol too seriously,” Colette’s father had warned her. But Nina did take him seriously. And increasingly, others were too.

“Life was hard enough when all Lord Aldric asked of us was to harvest his fields and work his forests. But things have become unbearable since he took the commons.”

The group of young people had gathered by one of the village wells. Like most nights, the thick clouds had choked the light of the moon and stars. None of them had brought candles, so they stood in near total darkness. It didn’t bother them that they could barely see each other’s faces—the darkness made certain things easier to say.

“That land had a good pond on it,” a timid voice said. “My family used to fish and draw water from it.”

“We all used to draw water from it,” someone else said. “Now our wells are drying up. Like this one right here—there’s nothing in it but mud!”

“What’s Lord Aldric need the land for anyway? Hasn’t he got enough of it?”

“I heard he’s going to cut the trees and plough more fields there.”

“Will we have to work them?”

“Will we get any grain from them?”

“I heard he wants to grow barley to sell along with the wheat.”

“Sell? To who? Us?”

“No, you fool, to people in the cities! The capitol, maybe.”

“We won’t have enough time to work three fields at harvest! Our own crops will rot.”

“I used to gather timber from those woods. And what will we do when winter comes? There won’t be enough firewood for everyone. We’ll freeze!”

“Oh don’t worry about that. We’ll starve long before we freeze.”

“He can’t just take the land from us. We’ve always used it.”

“He can take the land, obviously. That’s what he’s done.”

“Well, what if we just lived on it?”

The group went quiet when Nina spoke, and although she could not see their faces, she could feel everyone staring in the direction of her voice. They were waiting on her to continue.

“I mean,” she stalled. “There’s a lot of land, right? And he only has so many soldiers? What if we just lived on the land and stopped him from using it? We have everything we need to do it, and you know the land better than his soldiers do. You’d have the advantage.”

“He’d have us killed,” someone said.

“He can’t kill all of us,” Colette said beside her. “Some of us may die anyway if we don’t have enough to live on.”

Nina squeezed Colette’s hand, and she could feel it again, that flapping feeling, about to take flight.

“You’ve had your land taken,” she said. “Take it back.”

 

There were preparations to be made before they moved into the woods. They needed a plan. They needed to figure out what they were going to do about food and shelter. They needed to know what to do when Lord Aldric’s soldiers came.

Terrifyingly, their group, a little over twenty young people in total, looked to Nina for guidance. Jol was their leader, yes, but living in the commons was her idea in the first place, so they expected her to know what she was doing. Of course, she didn’t. But she did what she could. She taught them how to fashion a crude bow and how to make arrows. She taught them how to shoot, and they were quick students. In return, they taught her which mushrooms and berries were safe to eat, which leaves could be chewed to soothe indigestion and pain, and which trees provided the best burning wood.

It was a thrilling thing, to feel important and needed. Colette, Jol, even Marcus looked to her now. Marcus, the beautiful soft-eyed boy with large hands. Nina had noticed him on her first day in the village, and she had absolutely avoided him ever since. Her heart was full of him, and if he ever said hello to her, she would certainly die.

Well, not quite certainly. Their preparations brought them together quite often, and he’d said hello many times. She only ever responded with a jerky nod—any more than that and she would certainly die. But oh, the stories she imagined about him! Not with her, of course, but with Jol. The two of them had an odd sort of friendship. Marcus was starry, and Jol was grounded as dirt. They rarely saw eye to eye, and they fought often, but it never seemed to lead to bitter feelings between them.

“They’re childhood friends,” Colette explained.

Childhood friends. The made for even juicier drama.

Colette appreciated her stories, and Nina appreciated Colette’s appreciation. Before they fell asleep, Nina would tell one of her tales, whispering so Colette’s father wouldn’t hear the saucier bits. It was a little thing—insubstantial in the face of their preparations. But it was the part of the day Nina cherished the most.

“That was a beautiful story,” Colette said one night. They were huddled under the covers, and a harsh wind buffeted the outside of the house. “All of your stories are beautiful. But why do they have to be so sad?”

“They’re not sad,” Nina said, even though she knew they were.

“They are though. People come together, but they never stay together. Everyone loves each other, but their love can never be. That’s not romance, that’s tragedy. Can’t you make up a happy ending?”

“It wouldn’t be realistic.”

“It’s a story. Why should it have to be realistic?”

“It just does,” Nina insisted, her whisper harsh. She didn’t want to be cross with Colette, but she couldn’t help feeling defensive of her story. 

“Hmm. Alright then, keep telling your sad stories. But I’m going to imagine happy endings for them. The princes remain in love and are never separated. They learn everything about each other and still love each other afterward. They live very happy lives and nothing bad happens. There.”

“It wouldn’t happen like that in real life.”

“Maybe not. But I like my ending better.”

Nina rolled her eyes at Colette’s naivete. Secretly, she liked her ending too.

 

The first couple days in the commons went without issue. Perhaps Lord Aldric’s men didn’t notice that some people were missing from work in the western fields. Whatever the reason, it gave the group plenty of time to set up camp. Foraging turned up a good amount of food—although the land was stringent, it had had some time to rest. They roasted mushrooms, tubers, and fish caught from the pond. They decided to till a patch of land to plant vegetables. They went to sleep better rested and fed than they’d been in months.

Then the soldiers started their patrols, and Nina got her first look at their enemy. They were an underwhelming force, more brigand than solider. Nothing like Papa’s army. Their armor was a mishmash of ill-fitting plates that had worn out their polish, and while most of them carried swords, some of them brandished axes that were meant for chopping wood. If this was the best that he could afford, Nina supposed that Lord Aldric was not so wealthy a man, despite his title and land.

But while the soldiers did not impress Nina, the rest of the group feared them. And for good reason—it was their life’s work to maim and kill. Their weapons may have been rudimentary, but they would get the job done. If someone spotted a solider, they’d give a piercing whistle, and the group would scatter. Nina had been right about the land being on their side. It wasn’t difficult to lose the soldiers in the trees. Still, Nina fired a few warning shots in their direction for good measure. The soldiers did their chasing at a greater distance once they knew the villagers were armed with bows and arrows.

But their luck didn’t last. One of their group went missing after soldiers were spotted. They combed the forest and found his body in the ravine, hacked to bits.

“This is unforgiveable,” Jol told the group that night after they’d buried Andrew. “But we knew this could happen. They will try to intimidate us, and some of us will fall. We cannot falter, not when the village is depending on us to win back this land.”

His words were bold, but his face was ashen. The group did not rise to his words. The campfire crackled. Nina stroked Colette’s head as she cried quietly into her shoulder. Across from her, Marcus held his face in his hands.

“But they _can_ kill all of us,” a young man named Edwin said. “Sure, Lord Aldric wouldn’t execute the entire village. But twenty of us? We’re nothing to him.”

“If only we could have gotten more of the village to join us,” Marcus murmured.

“They won’t come,” Edwin said bitterly. “Not after what happened to Andrew. And who would blame them?”

“My brother was prepared for what happened to him,” Andrew’s sister, Lenora, snapped. They were her first words since they’d found her brother. “Our mother died this summer from water fever. If we had been allowed to come here, we wouldn’t have run out of herbs to ease her pain. My brother knew the value of this land. Everyone knows it. I’ll join him in death before I give up on this land!”

“You might yet. If everyone knows how much we need this land, then why’s it just us in these woods?”

“They’re afraid. Of course they are. That’s why we need to be brave for them!”

“Brave enough to die? For a few acres of trees?”

“If that’s the way you feel about it, nobody’s stopping you from leaving.”

“Now wait a minute. Let’s calm down. You don’t really mean that, do you?”

“How can you tell us to be calm when Andrew’s been killed?”

“We’ll make them pay,” Nina said. She had been trembling all afternoon, but her voice held firm. “I mean that literally. Aldric’s tight on money, and that’s why he wants to turn this land into fields, right? He can barely afford his own soldier, much less replace them. So let’s show him how costly it is to treat us this way.”

Marcus lifted his head from his hands. He stared across the fire directly at her. “Are you saying we should fight the soldiers? Declare war, just like that?” he asked. “If we lose, it’ll be death for all of us.”

Nina blushed and looked to Jol for help. But he was looking at her too. Pressed for an answer, she sat up very straight, though she was exhausted with grief. She was grimy and disheveled from a week in the woods, but she tried to look as noble and true as her Papa had.

“There are some things worth fighting for.”

 

Colette volunteered to act as bait.

“I’m fast,” she explained. “I know I can outrun them. Besides, I’m a terrible shot. I’d be no use to us in the trees.”

Nina tried to talk her out of it. She kept imagining Colette in that ravine, cut to pieces like Andrew was. But Colette had her mind made up.

“There are some things worth fighting for, right?” she said smiling weakly. “My father’s too old to last a bad winter if we don’t have firewood. I’m doing this.”

She hugged Nina. Although she looked small and delicate, she had worked hard her entire life. Her arms had strength in them.

“I think you really are a nymph after all,” she said. “I could never have done this before I met you. It’s magic, isn’t it? It has to be.”

So Nina had no choice but to trust her. And Colette _was_ fast. She outran the soldiers and led them straight to the clearing where the rest of the group had hidden. Fifteen arrows flew out at three soldiers. The soldiers fell, and Nina’s heart beat so hard her head hurt. Her arrow had sunk easily into the soldier’s neck. He hadn’t even seen her.

_I’ve killed someone_ , she thought. It hadn’t felt at all like she’d expected.

It wasn’t until later that night when she was on her sleeping mat that Nina could really think about what had happened. A memory came to her from years ago—the bastard man telling her to never steal. She had promised she wouldn’t, but today she had taken someone’s life. Certainly that counted as theft.

But what _wasn’t_ theft? The more she thought about it, the more things seemed to count. Life, land, hearts, all of them could be stolen. It was wrong to steal, but weren’t some thefts more culpable than others? When she’d stolen food as a child so her sister could eat, was that worse than letting her starve? If she thought about it like that, then even Papa was a thief. War was certainly a theft, perhaps one of the biggest.

If everything could and would be stolen, if everyone was a thief, then perhaps the best anyone could do was to try to be a noble thief. Papa was. Maybe she could be too.

It wasn’t right what she had done, but it wasn’t wrong either. If something was taken from you, then how wrong was it to take something in return? That was fair. That was justice. Those soldiers were paid to kill and die, whereas her group just wanted their land back. They just wanted to live and to live well.

Nina looked at Colette sleeping next to her. She decided that if she needed to steal to take this land back, then she would steal. She would steal the world if that’s what it took.

 

A week of fighting hard, and the soldiers kept coming. Their ambush tactics were effective, but it was difficult to move freely around the forest. The soldiers were more cautious now, and to be caught alone or off guard would mean death. They hadn’t lost any more of their number yet, but there had been a few close calls. A couple boys had been injured in a trap and had to be sent home.

The continuous soldier presence also meant that it was harder to safely look for food. It hadn’t been so bad when they’d had the run of the land, but now it was dangerous to stray too far from camp. Their small section of the forest couldn’t support them all, and the group grew hungrier.

But there was heartening news—the villagers were starting to resist. Lenora had returned briefly to tell her family about Andrew’s death. The next day, her entire extended family did not report to work the western fields, claiming illness. Over the next few days, more and more families seemed to fall ill, and the villagers who did go to the field worked sluggishly, stopping often to moan and cough. No matter how the soldiers beat them, they couldn’t be made to work any faster. At this rate, much of the harvest would rot.

“Aldric can’t send bad grain to market. He can’t make any money off of it,” Lenora reported smugly. “All this pressure on us shows how afraid he is.”

“It means that he’s getting more desperate,” Jol added. “He’ll try something big to get back at us, like burning the village fields.”

“If he did that, the village wouldn’t last the winter,” Marcus said.

“Then he’ll burn enough to make us suffer,” Jol replied. “Instead of waiting for it to happen, I say we make the first move. We have to take back the commons before winter, or we’ll freeze.”

“What more are we supposed to do? It would be reckless to take the soldiers head on.”

“We’ve been focusing too much on the soldiers,” Nina said. “It’s worked so far, but Aldric doesn’t care about his soldiers. If we want to pressure him, we have to target something he holds dear. We have to take the fight to him.”

Jol nodded. “Right. Soldiers, villagers, we’re all expendable to him. But the village is already letting his wealth rot in the fields. What else can we go after?”

Nina thought for a moment.

“Where did you say he lives again?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something a little different this time.
> 
> Anyway, remember how Fire Emblem was like, "Here's a character based both on Les Mis and Robin Hood"? How wild was that, right?


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so heads up, Niles does torture and kill a man in this one. I've added it to the tags, but just wanted to let you know.

Each time Niles visited the deep realm, he was a little more fed up with himself. He didn’t expect the girls to forgive him, so why were they inevitably happy to see him? They should have despised him—at least he was used to that. Affection was difficult. He knew he didn’t deserve it.

The girls had a good life there. Better than they could have had in the castle or anywhere else in Nohr. They didn’t go hungry. They had wide fields and clean rivers to play in. They were surrounded by people who cared for them and wanted them to live full, happy lives. He wouldn’t have believed such a place existed if he hadn’t seen it himself. He could never quite feel comfortable there.

They grew at a pace he was not prepared for, despite Corrin and Azura’s warnings. He watched Kana grow into independence, and she became the child he knew she would become—confident and daring, with an openness of spirit that endeared everyone to her. She fell out of trees. She skinned her elbow chasing wild goats. She could talk to anyone, even strangers, and the village kids always went along with her ideas. She flourished.

It was not so easy for Nina. She had spent too long shaping herself into a shield between her sister and the world. Now that the world was harmless, it was like she didn’t know what to do with her hands. Nina could be with other kids if Kana was with her, but she didn’t seek people out. She retreated into her studies and her archery, solitary activities that she excelled at. When they went shooting together, Nina always took the opportunity to show off. She’d hit a target and give him a look demanding his pride. And Niles was proud. He was also guilty.

It had seemed sensible, even necessary, to teach her at the time. He knew he wouldn’t be around, and he had wanted her to be safe. For him, safety had always meant being on the right end of a weapon, so he gave her one. But when Nina started hitting targets consistently, then every time, he had second thoughts. She was growing up in a land untouched by war and without want for food or shelter. What would she need to know how to kill for? What good did it do her to practice in the woods for hours on end perfecting a skill that she would hopefully never use?

In retrospect, it was obvious why he’d taught her. For safety, yes, but not only that. He’d wanted to give her something, and this was all he’d had to give. It wasn’t generous. She was being raised well. Each time he saw her, she’d had a little more of her wickedness ironed out. She spoke kindly to people. She didn’t hit. She didn’t throw things down and rush off in a huff. He recognized her less and less. So he’d wanted to give her something he could recognize. After all, hadn’t he wanted her to be like him, just a little?

What an awful thing to wish on a child.

“I can’t do anything for them,” he confessed to Corrin. They were packing their trunks, preparing to leave the deep realm in the morning. Corrin was somber that evening, as he tended to be whenever they had to leave the girls. Still, he answered him with as much patience as he could muster.

“ _This_ is what we can do for them,” he said. “It’s not nothing.”

Perhaps. Nina and Kana were still alive, after all. They were living well. But they would live well whether he was there or not. Niles knew what he was. It was why he pushed most people away. Sooner or later, he’d get his claws into them.

“And you?” Niles prodded. He knew he shouldn’t, but he felt terrible, and it was so tempting to pick at scabs until the blood poked through. He watched all the muscles in Corrin’s back tighten. He wondered whether he would be angry or sad.

“Let’s not,” Corrin said, the exasperation heavy in his voice. He did not turn to face him. “I love you, and I’ll say it as many times as you need to hear it. But could we not get into that tonight? Could we just go to sleep? I’m tired. Aren’t you tired?”

Niles was incredibly tired.

 

The battle went wrong almost immediately. Kinshi knights from the south, and their soldiers staggered under a rain of arrows, the line crumpling like paper. Niles heard the scream of a horse—Leo’s mount had been struck by an arrow and had bucked its master off. Niles tried to provide cover, but between the kinshi knights above and lancers on the ground, he had little in the way of a clear shot. An eruption of magic and dark branches from the ground and his lord was on his feet, staunching the line. But only for a moment. They were being pushed back again. Everything was in chaos.

Then there was a roar, and Niles saw his husband’s dragon form rear up, arrows bouncing off its gleaming scales like they were nothing but pebbles. Some of the soldiers around him cheered as the dragon barreled into the enemy line. Niles felt his heart turn to ice.  

“Corrin!” he yelled. But his voice was swallowed up by the battlefield.

“Let him go!” Leo ordered. “Unless you have scales tough as armor, you won’t make it past that line. I need you here, preferably alive!”

His lord was right, as usual. It would be suicide to follow Corrin into the heart of the fray. He simply had to trust his husband to clear a path.

Except Corrin didn’t come back.

The tide of the battle turned, though only enough to keep them from losing ground. The Hoshidans dug in, giving the Nohrians time to regroup. But Corrin was nowhere to be found. Niles and Kaze went as far across enemy territory as they dared, but there was no sign of either prince or dragon. The ice in Niles’s heart cracked. So it had finally happened. He was gone.

He was gone.

“He’s probably been taken prisoner then,” Leo said after Niles had reported back. In the tent’s candlelight, his lord’s face was white with worry and fatigue. Leo was doing his best to remain calm, but his fists were shaking. “And you didn’t find anything else out there?”

Niles shook his head. His entire body was clay.

“I see.” Leo grimaced and pressed his fist against his forehead. “Dammit. The Hoshidans may try to bait us with him. They’ll try to force us into trying something reckless. Perhaps a covert rescue…but we don’t even know where they’re keeping him. And they would expect it. Still, it’s probably our best chance at getting him back. I’ll have to speak with my siblings about this.”

Niles nodded.

“Thank you, Niles. You should get some rest while you can.”

Niles nodded again, and Leo sighed. He stood and walked to the entrance of the tent. Then he paused.

“We will find him, Niles,” he said. “We’ll bring him back.”

Niles waited until Leo left the tent before he allowed himself to laugh. Sorry, Lord Leo, but no. No you won’t. To the Hoshidans, Corrin was a traitor who had killed their queen. If they had captured him, Niles had no doubt that he would be executed.

“Stupid,” he muttered, though not sure at who. “Stupid.”

Still, he had orders to follow. He crawled into his tent (supposed to be his and Corrin’s, but just his now) and lay down. Rest. His husband was dead. He was going to go to sleep. The darkness crushed down upon his chest and he thought he might suffocate, but he would rest. His lord had ordered it, so that’s what he would do.

If he couldn’t do that, then why was he even here?

Niles lay there for over an hour, drifting between consciousness and despair, before he heard someone at the entrance of the tent. He instinctively reached for an arrow, ready to plunge it into the intruder’s chest. Instead, he saw Corrin standing in lamplight.

“Oh,” Niles said, the arrow slipping from his hand. “You’re not dead.”

“Not quite,” Corrin said, setting down his lamp and joining him on the bedroll. “Had a close call, though. I’m sorry, I must have scared everyone.”

“What happened?” Niles demanded. But before he could respond, Niles took his face in his hands. Corrin felt solid, real. He threw his arms around him, pulling him close to feel his body against his. Perhaps this wasn’t a dream after all. Corrin was really alive.

“Ouch, Niles!” Corrin squirmed out of his grip, clutching at his chest. “It’s not fully healed yet.”

“What?”

Corrin lifted his shirt and Niles saw the new scar—a ridge that ran between his ribs. Dangerously close to his heart. Niles reached out and carefully ran his thumb across it. He heard Corrin’s breath catch.

“What happened?” Niles asked again.

“It was a trap,” Corrin said, lowering his shirt. “They must have expected me to charge in as a dragon. They had a special blade ready that sawed right through my scales. I panicked. I thought…I don’t know what I thought. But I knew it was a deep wound, not one that even magic could heal easily. I fled the battlefield for the deep realm.”

“But there’s no path around here, is there?”

“I found a path. I must have opened a Dragon Vein. I don’t know how I did it—I was half mad with pain at the time. It took me weeks to heal there.”

“And a few hours here,” Niles murmured. “We thought you’d been captured. We were ready to cross the Hoshidan line to rescue you.”

“Yes, I got an earful about that from Xander.”

“I thought you’d been killed.”

Corrin looked at him, his eyes soft with sympathy. He took Niles’s hand and pressed a kiss into the back of his wrist.

“I’m sorry I put you through that,” he said.

“You’re always apologizing to me.”

Corrin’s smile was faint. Perhaps his wound was aching him.

“Let’s sleep,” he said, lying down on the bedroll. “We have a war to fight tomorrow.”

Niles lay down next to his husband and pressed himself against the familiar curve of his back. He listened to the steady sound of Corrin’s breathing. He thought the darkness would be easier to bear now that he had returned to him. But it wasn’t. Corrin drifted off to sleep, and Niles lay there, still awake, a constellation of sharpness in his chest.

The little pieces of his heart just wouldn’t come together right.

 

“You’re certain?”

“It’s not fair to Odin otherwise.”

Leo frowned. He set his ledger down and looked out the window into the castle courtyard.

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have jobs that would benefit from your expertise. Information held by people who may be difficult to persuade,” he said. “However…”

“However?”

“It’s risky. And it might amount to nothing. It would probably be a waste of time.”

“How much time?”

“At least a week. Longer if it goes badly, which it might.”

“I’ll do it.”

Leo turned back to Niles, his frown deepening with concern. Niles lowered his gaze.

“You don’t want to speak with Corrin about this first?”

“Corrin is not my master.”

“He’s your husband.”

“Yes. And this is war.”

Leo sighed. “It is. Of course it is. Thank you, Niles, for reminding me.”

“My apologies, Lord Leo. But you have been a bit hands-off with me of late.”

“Have I? Well, I suppose I have,” Leo admitted. “I thought you and my brother should have some time.”

“Time, milord?”

“Yes, time,” Leo snapped, embarrassed. “I thought…well, you and Corrin didn’t even have a proper wedding. And then he went and brought children to the castle. It was madness, of course. But you seemed, I don’t know. Happy.”

Happy. He had been happy. Niles hadn’t recognized it at the time. Now that time was behind him, and he could hardly remember its shape.

“I appreciate it, milord,” Niles said. “But I don’t deserve special treatment. If you need me, use me. I’m here to serve _you_.”

Leo stared him for a long moment. Niles stared back. It was not fair to ask him to give this order, but here he was, doing the cruel thing. As imposing as his lord could be, in many ways he was still a child. He was not so much older than Nina, Niles thought. The realization was horrible.

“This is stupid,” Leo finally said. “Look Niles, I don’t understand what you’re thinking. But if you’re so desperate for it, then yes. I have a mission for you. Will you accept it?”

“Yes, Lord Leo.”

 

Corrin took the news better than Niles had expected. His expectations had been low, however.

Corrin stared at him, expression unreadable, as their supper cooled between them. The silence was awful, but it wasn’t as if Niles could have felt any worse. He waited for Corrin to speak, or to throw his soup in his face. Something.

“How long?” Corrin finally asked. His voice was clear as lake water and just as cold.

Niles shrugged. “Weeks perhaps. However long it takes.”

“Weeks,” Corrin repeated. “It must be awfully important then.”

“Must be,” Niles agreed.

Corrin stood abruptly, the sound of his chair scarping against the floor like a tear in the world. For a moment, Niles saw his red eyes fill with anger. Then the moment passed, and he just looked worn out.

“Excuse me,” Corrin murmured.

Niles didn’t watch Corrin leave the room. He looked straight ahead, even after the sound of wings had faded. He looked at the empty space Corrin had left, chair askew. He would get used to this, he thought. Pain and pleasure were two sides of the same filthy coin. If he killed one, he killed the other. He would get used to it, and once he did, it wouldn’t hurt anymore. It would be a numb fact.

 

It was a simple, though potentially traitorous mission—capture one of Iago’s captains and wring Iago’s plans from him. Nohr’s tactician was obviously withholding information from the royal siblings, just as they had withheld information from him. There were, for all practical purposes, two invasions of Hoshido, and the only continuity between them was for the king’s sake. And the king more likely than not knew of the discord in his ranks. Still, if Niles was caught, even Leo would not be able to intervene. He’d be hanged. And that was if he was lucky.

Not that he planned on getting caught. He had run this exact mission many times before, although not usually against his technical allies. Men liked to believe that their loyalties would hold under any pressure. But in truth, few did. Again and again, he had ruined people into betraying everything. That was the strength of a promise—a few days in an abandoned shack.

His target was a grizzled man, the sort who had seen and committed more atrocities than he cared to remember. High enough in the chain of command to know the shape of Iago’s strategy, but not high enough that his disappearance would warrant an exhaustive search. Cause for concern, yes, but Iago wouldn’t raze the country for him. He was also an arrogant man and liberal with drink, which made extracting him from his camp an easy thing.

Three days of his head in a sack and a wad of rags shoved in his mouth. Hours of being forced to stand. The dread of silence, the moment before something was slammed shut next to his ear. Then he was ready to talk. Niles’s art was easing him into it, picking apart the seams of a person so they came undone cleanly. Even a loose tongue could be bitten off. So Niles was gentle. He coaxed the man out of his shock with a steady voice and empty reassurances. He gave him water to drink and fed him a thin gruel. He didn’t demand. He didn’t accuse. He only asked him to talk, and the man did.

He recounted the raids on the Hoshidan countryside he’d lead. The villages his squadron had taken and the supplies they’d pillaged. He talked about the logistics of their convoy—how much ground they covered in a day, what time of day they made camp, how many horses and soldiers they had, how many mages and how many knights, a stock of their provisions, how rations were distributed, how they tended to their wounded, how often he heard from Iago’s generals. He told him that Iago wanted prisoners. He was purposefully avoiding direct confrontations with the Hoshidan army and was preying on villages to enslave the peasantry. Destruction was a byproduct. His main goal was conversion. Hoshido would exist to serve Nohr, and Nohr would grow strong on its marrow. The destruction of the Hoshidan throne would mark the beginning of this new order.

Once he had said everything he knew, Niles had him go through it again. And again, and again. He flushed out details and picked apart inconsistencies, gaps in the man’s knowledge and memory. Sometimes the man wept. He begged Niles to remove the cloth from his eyes. Niles would wait for his sobbing to subside. Then he would ask him to repeat his story from the beginning. Days of this. And perhaps Niles dragged it on for too long. A mind under constant pressure did not take long to break, and already the captain was prone to fits of babbling.

But how easy it was for Niles to become this again. Like stepping into a well-worn coat. And he was good at it. Gods, he was an expert at ruining people. He had thought, hoped even, it wouldn’t be so. That there would be a hitch, some rein on his cruelty. But he felt nothing but a faint disgust. He was the same as ever.

Unfortunately, the man’s knowledge was mostly useless. Leo had already worked out the broad strokes of Iago’s plans for Hoshido. What he had wanted to know was whether Iago had designs on the Nohrian royals, and whether they should expect a friendly knife in the back. It had been a stretch to expect a captain to know that much. But he did confirm that Iago had lied to the royal siblings about the army’s provisions. Aside from the resources they pillaged from Hoshido, Nohr had a greater store of grain than Iago had led them to believe. It was less than Niles had hoped for, but it wasn’t nothing.

Because the captain had been cooperative, Niles let him have a night of undisturbed sleep. And in the middle of it, he snapped his neck. The grave had already been dug, and Niles buried the captain quietly. If they hadn’t found him by now, there was little chance of Nohrian soldiers ever finding the body. But Niles was thorough. As a retainer to the third prince of Nohr, he would not be anything less.

Not anything more, either.

 

It was late when Niles returned to the castle. He had taken the long way home, and he had nearly fallen into the path of a Nohrian scouts. He had gone slowly after that. It would shame his lord for him to be caught now, after everything had happened. But he made it, bearing the disappointing news to Lord Leo.

“Secret granaries,” Leo scoffed. “That’s petty, even for Iago. It’s a shame he didn’t know more. You didn’t encounter any other difficulties?”

“No, milord. Though I did come across a scouting party suspiciously far from the border.”

“Iago must still be trying to figure out where we make camp. Well, I hope he loses sleep over it. Thank you, Niles. I can use this. ”

“Will that be all, milord?”

“Yes. Well…” Leo caught himself, frowning. He shook his head. “No, that’s not my business. Yes, Niles. That will be all.”

Niles bowed and excused himself. Leo’s words were confusing, but he did not feel confused. He did not want to think about it or anything else. It was not his place. He would make himself into a machine, functional and dependable. His master’s until he broke.

Niles stepped out into the castle courtyard, empty but for the scattering of soldiers on patrol. The night sky was bright with stars. After a week and a half under Nohr’s black skies, Niles had forgotten how bright home was. Niles turned his face up to the stars, then looked quickly away. Their light was beautiful and blinding. It pained him to look. He hurried toward the darkness of his room.

He did not expect candlelight. He did not expect to find Corrin sitting up in their bed, eyes fixed on the door.

“You’re back,” Corrin said.

“You’re here,” Niles replied.

They stared at each other, the abruptness of their meeting making them forget the sour note they’d parted on. Corrin recovered himself first.

“Don’t sleep on the balcony tonight,” he said, and Niles realized that he had been clutching the doorknob. With an effort, he let it go. He hung up his cloak. He peeled off the clothes he had lived in for the past week and put on a clean shirt. He wedged himself between the sheets Corrin pulled back for him, the bed foreign and nearly unbearable in its softness. He waited for Corrin to say something, but he didn’t. He was staring at the candle at his bedside, a stubby, melted thing, its life nearly burnt out.

“I thought you would be in the deep realm,” Niles said. _Without me_ , he didn’t say. Corrin shook his head.

“We don’t need to return to the deep realm,” Corrin said, and Niles felt something inside of him lurch.

“What happened.”

“The invisible soldiers found it. I got there just in time, but that land is no longer a secret. It’s not safe there, or probably anywhere else. Kana was alright, though. I brought her back to the castle with me. She’s sleeping in the old nursery until we can get a proper room ready for her.”

Corrin delivered the news so dispassionately that it was difficult for Niles to understand it at first. And then he did, and panic had him by the throat.

“What about Nina.”

“By the time I’d arrived, she had already left. Kana didn’t know where she went. But she’s probably not in that realm anymore.”

Niles shut his eye. “So. She’s gone,” he said.

“Yes.”

Ah. So he had failed her, just as he’d thought. But he’d known that. He’d known that for a while now. And wasn’t it what he’d wanted, to put distance between himself and her? Hadn’t he decided she’d be better off that way? Nina would be grown by now, and she had always been able to care of herself. He had no right to mourn her leaving, absolutely none. Still, he felt grief rising in him just the same. Thank the gods Kana was safe at least.

“She’ll be alright,” Niles said, hoping that if he said it, it would happen somehow.

“That’s what Kana said.”

He felt Corrin’s fingers in his hair, and when Niles opened his eye, he was looking at him.

“You waited up for me,” Niles realized. Corrin almost smiled.

“Just until the candle went out. I thought…I had a feeling that you might come back tonight. Looks like you made it just in time.”

Corrin kept staring, studying his face in the dim light. Niles felt himself recoiling. After so much time spent hidden, it was unsettling to be seen.

“Something on my face?” Niles finally asked.

“No,” Corrin said, running his thumb over Niles’s cheek, just beneath his eyepatch. “It’s just been awhile. I wanted to look at you.”

“And how do I look to you?”

“Like a man condemned,” Corrin said. Niles laughed humorlessly.

“You’re not going to ask about the mission?”

“I can if you want to talk about it.”

“I don’t.”

“Then I won’t ask.”

His patience was insufferable.

“Weren't you supposed to be angry with me?” Niles sneered.

Corrin sighed. Finally, his gaze slipped from Niles’s face and back to the candle’s weakening flame. He’d done it, Niles thought. Now maybe he would leave him alone.

He was wrong.

“Niles, how long have we been married?” Corrin asked. The question caught Niles off guard. He thought about it, unsure of where Corrin could be going with this. It felt like years, but that couldn’t be right. They hadn’t even met until the war, so half a year at most? But after the time spent in the deep realm…

“Oh,” Niles said. “Shit.”

“Isn’t it?” Corrin agreed, turning back to him. “Isn’t it the most ridiculous thing? By the Nohrian calendar, we’ve been married less than a year. But we’ve already had kids who have grown into teenagers, and I’ve been married to you longer than you’ve been married to me. I don’t even know how old I technically am anymore.

What I’m trying to say is that I _was_ angry with you. I knew I shouldn’t be. I knew that you had your duty to Leo. I knew that we had to win this war, no matter the personal cost. But I couldn’t help it. It felt like you were running away from me.”

“I was,” Niles confessed.

“I know. And I know you were trying to get me to hate you for it. And for a while, it worked, and I did. Because it hurt. It really hurt. It hurt the girls too, you not being there. But then I got tired of being angry. And then I just missed you. It’s been months for me, Niles. Months. After all that time, all I wanted was to have you back.”

And just like that, it caught up to him. The fragments of pain in his chest no longer cold, but searing. The pieces soldering together in fire. This was it, what he’d wanted, and what he’d wanted to avoid. The pain of mending always worse than the pain of breaking.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his throat burning. Corrin took his hand, weaving their fingers together. He shook his head.

“Ask me to forgive you.”

“Corrin.”

“You already know my answer. But I want you to ask.”

“I…I don’t deserve it.”

“It’s not about deserving that."

“I’m just going to end up hurting you again.”

“Niles. Ask.”

Niles took a deep breath, his lungs shaky and clear.

“Will you forgive me?” he asked.

“I do,” Corrin answered. “Don’t run from me anymore.”

Corrin leaned over and kissed him, and it was like breathing again. Niles laughed against his husband’s mouth. He pulled him closer, trembling hands knotting Corrin’s shirt. He was afraid, terrified even, but still he wanted to hold onto him. He didn’t want to break himself anymore.

With a quiet sigh, the candle burned itself out, the thin smell of smoke filling the room.

“See? Just in time,” Corrin whispered. “Welcome home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, that's enough dad angst. Next chapter is Nina Time.
> 
> Also, wow this is embarrassing, but I. Made a Niles/Corrin playlist. Like some kind of nerd or something. I'll just leave it and my bad taste in music here. If you're into that.
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/user/p2kslqn4cxs3prllsue7r9ofo/playlist/3tTWdxSVufUn4OfARizqxp?si=NOVnB_tWTFSSv0sjlqg-Vw


	11. Chapter 11

“Dad!”

Kana launched herself into Niles’s chest, as she had always done when he returned to the deep realm. Except she was no longer small. 

“Dad?! Are you okay?” 

“Peachy,” Niles wheezed as he stared up at the ceiling. At least he hadn’t hit his head on the breakfast table.  Above him, he heard Corrin snort with laughter. “It’s good to see you too, Kana. But would you mind letting me up now?”

“Oh, whoops!” 

Kana got up and helped Niles to his feet. But before Niles could appreciate how easy it was to breathe without a teenager sitting on his chest, Kana pulled him into a crushing hug. In addition to being bigger, she was also a good deal stronger than Niles remembered.

“Dad!” she exclaimed. “You’re really here! Papa, look! Dad’s here!” 

“He is, isn’t he?” Corrin said, all grin.

“I am.”

“You are!” Kana laughed, her voice as joyous as a geyser. “I knew you’d come back! I missed you soooooooo much! Nina said we should kick you in the shin if we saw you again, but I won’t!”

Niles couldn’t help but flinch when she mentioned Nina. For a moment, Kana’s spirits seemed to dampen. Some of the tightness went out of her hug.

“I wish she were here,” Kana said. Then she shook her head and looked up at him. Her smile was every bit as brilliant as he remembered. “Actually, if she were, she’d probably just beat you up. So it’s fine! I’m sure she’s fine! You’re here!”

“Yeah,” Niles said. Cautiously, he raised his hand to pat the back of Kana’s head. “I’m sorry I took so long. I missed you too.” 

“Hehee!” she giggled. Then she was wriggling out of his grasp, hands flailing. “Oh! Dad!”

“Kana.”

“There’s someone you have to meet! My best friend! Papa, we can, can’t we? Can we go now?”

“I have time if your dad does.” 

“I have time,” Niles said. “Who are we meeting?”

“Trout!”

“…Your best friend is a fish?”

“Hahaa! No, of course not! He’s a wyvern named after a fish!”

“Of course.” Niles shot Corrin a look, which he ignored. Corrin stood from the table, stacking the breakfast plates for Jakob to clear away later.

“Shall we then?” he said.

“Why does she have a wyvern?” Niles whispered as Kana led the way across the courtyard to the wyvern keep.

“She had something of a dragon phase,” Corrin explained. “She wore me down.” 

“So you let her have a wyvern.”

“Yes.”

“That can’t be safe. Kana’s what, twelve?”

“She’s fourteen,” Corrin said. Fourteen! “Plenty of wyvern riders learn to fly that young. Anyway, you taught Nina how to shoot when she was even younger.”

Niles flinched. It was true, of course. And it wasn’t something he was exactly proud of.

“That’s…” Niles struggled.

“Different?”

“Yes.” 

“What are you guys talking about?” Kana whispered. 

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Niles said. It wasn’t so easy to talk over the heads of fourteen-year-olds. How  _ were _ you supposed to talk to fourteen-year-olds anyway? “So. You like dragons?”

“Yup! Papa can turn into a dragon, you know!”

“I’m aware.”

“I wish I could turn into a dragon.” 

Corrin frowned. “You’re perfect just the way you are, Kana,” he said. 

“Thanks, Papa,” Kana said. Then she turned to Niles, grinned, and rolled her eyes. So she had grown into her sarcasm too. 

They arrived at the wyvern keep, an austere building wrought with iron and stone. It was more prison than stable. And for good reason, Niles thought. A wyvern loose in the castle would work terrors. He glanced at Kana. She had grown some, yes, but she did not even stand as high as his shoulders. He couldn’t imagine her sitting astride a wyvern—he’d been able to hold her with one arm just a few weeks ago.

“Okay, Dad, you and Papa wait out here while I get Trout,” Kana instructed.

“By yourself?” Niles asked. He looked at Corrin, who shrugged, unconcerned. 

“She’s been training Trout for over a year now,” he said. Kana nodded in agreement.

“See? It’s fine! And I had a really cool entrance planned, which won’t be as cool if you come in with me. So just stay right there. Actually, Dad, maybe you could move a little closer and behind Papa? Just in case.”

“Just in case?” Niles asked, but Kana had already scampered into the keep. He turned to Corrin. “Just in case?”

“Wyverns are cautious around me,” he said. 

“So it’s for my protection?”

“I didn’t know you were afraid of wyverns,” Corrin teased.

“I’m not,” Niles said. And he wasn’t—he had shot too many flying beasts out of the sky for that. He just wasn’t used to worrying about the person  _ on  _ that wyvern.

The gates to the wyvern keep burst open with a nightmare of scales. The wyvern roared and reared back, its wings unfurling like a black sail. Niles braced himself, each battle-ready muscle in him anticipating the next moment when the wyvern would crash down, its flashing teeth upon them. But the wyvern held its position, and Kana stood in her saddle, throwing her arms out.

“Ta-dah!” she crowed. Corrin clapped politely, and Niles joined in after a moment’s hesitation. Kana slid out of the saddle and down the wyvern’s side. She took a bow, and the wyvern dipped its head alongside her. And, alright, it was impressive. 

“Trout,” Kana said, taking the wyvern’s reins. “This is Dad. Dad, this is Trout.”

The wyvern turned its large yellow eyes on Niles. Then it snorted and began to scratch at its neck with its wing talon. Clearly the wyvern did not think much of him, if it thought at all.  

“At least he doesn’t dislike you,” Corrin said helpfully. “Don’t take it personally, Niles.”

“I’m not taking it personally,” Niles said. He didn’t care whether the wyvern liked him or not, so long as it didn’t bite anyone’s head off. 

“Auntie Camilla says its best for wyverns not to be overly friendly anyway,” Kana added, though she was clearly disappointed that he and the wyvern weren’t fast friends. “He’s being a brat right now, but he’s usually a really good boy! When those creepy soldiers attacked the deep realm, he came to the rescue and helped me save Papa!”

“You fought against those soldiers?” Niles asked. Corrin had told him that the deep realm had been invaded. He hadn’t mentioned that Kana had taken part in the battle. 

“Yup!” Kana said, beaming with pride. “I was super scared at first, but when I saw those soldiers attacking Papa, I got so angry that I couldn’t be afraid anymore!”

“She and Trout held their own,” Corrin confirmed. “I wouldn’t have been able to hold off those soldiers without their help.”

“I looked pretty heroic, huh Papa?”

“You certainly did.”

“Heh!” Kana giggled, hugging Trout’s neck. “Dad, do you ever ride Papa?”

Never in his life had Niles seen someone turn so pale so quickly before. Corrin looked as if he’d just swallowed a frog. Normally, Niles would have enjoyed seeing such a reaction, but he was at a loss for how to respond himself. 

“Depends on how you mean,” he managed to say, and the look Corrin gave him could have withered lesser weeds. 

“I mean, I rode Trout into battle, and Papa can turn into a dragon too,” Kana explained innocently.  “I bet you two would be unstoppable together! You could fire arrows from his back.”

“Hmm, you know Kana, I don’t think we’ve tried that,” Niles said, doing his very damn best not to burst out laughing. Of course that’s what she had meant. He looked at Corrin delightedly. He’d thought his husband had long since grown immune to innuendo, but oh it was good to see him riled up like this. Niles couldn’t help it, not when it was  _ right there _ .

“What do you think, Corrin?” Niles asked. “Should I ride you?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Aw, Papa! Why not?” Kana cried. “We could be a dragon team!”

“Well, for one, it would affect his aim. And I wouldn’t be able to fight the way I’m used to if I have to worry about him on my back,” Corrin said. Then he looked Niles square in the eye, his expression utter seriousness. “Besides, if your dad rode me, I think he’d have a hard time getting off.” He turned back to Kana. “I wouldn’t wear a saddle, after all. It would be dangerous.”

A stupid grin spread across Niles’s face. He couldn’t help it. He loved his husband.

“I still think it would be cool,” Kana muttered.

“Anyway,” Corrin said, clearing his throat. “Kana, weren’t you going to show your dad how well you fly?” 

“Oh yeah!” Kana said, her face brightening. She clambered up the wyvern’s side and sat gallantly in her saddle. “Watch this, Dad!” 

She snapped the reins and the wyvern took off running, its talons digging into the ground as if the earth were soft as cake. It leapt, its leathery wings pummeling the air, and its body seemed impossibly heavy, too heavy for flight. But then it was in the sky, climbing steadily. Not falling. 

“She really has grown,” Niles remarked, shading his eye from the sun. 

“She has,” Corrin agreed. He smiled softly, his face turned up. 

“So,” Niles said. “A hard time getting off?”

“Niles.”

“Your words, not mine.”

 

Leo promised it would not take long--a brief trip to a nearby domain to negotiate grain purchases with a minor lord. He could be there and back within a few days on horseback, provided that the weather held. Should he get caught in one of Nohr’s autumn storms, Lord Aldric was sure to offer hospitality to a prince’s retainer.

“I didn’t plan on sending you out again so soon,” Leo said. “But I’ve sent Odin out to gather intelligence at the Hoshidan border, and the harvest is coming to an end. If the captain’s information is correct, then we’ll have to act on it quickly.”

“And what offer shall I make him?” Niles asked.

“Ten gold a bushel, but first try to find out whether Iago has made a bid. Though if he did, I doubt we’d be able to match him coin for coin. We could go up to thirteen gold a bushel, but no higher. If you must, remind him that I could have him called in for military service. Be persuasive.”

“Yes, Lord Leo.”

It wasn’t so bad to have a boring mission now and again. For one thing, it put Corrin’s heart at ease. He had enough to worry about between the war with his Hoshidan siblings and their still missing daughter. Niles figured it would be a comfort to him to know that the worst that could happen was that he might make a bad deal on low-quality grain. The problem, if it could really be called that, was Kana.

“Can’t I go with you, Dad?” she asked as soon as she caught wind of his mission. “It’s not dangerous, right? And I’ll bet you could get there a lot quicker by air than by road.”

She made a couple of good arguments, and showing up with a big wyvern to do business would probably keep the price of grain low, but Niles refused to bring his daughter with him on business. Corrin was also against her going. 

“I would rather you stay here,” Corrin told her. “Your father can handle himself. Besides, you’ve fallen behind on your studies.”

But Kana was persistent. She badgered Niles about the mission throughout day, begging and bargaining until Niles wondered whether it would be easier to bring her along after all.

“Kana, enough,” Corrin finally said at dinner, not quite angry, but clearly past the point of patience. The table stilled, and the sound of Kana putting down her silverware was garish against the silence. Niles expected Kana to talk back. As a child, she had rarely taken no for a complete answer. But instead of pouting, she looked stunned, as if Corrin had reached across the table and slapped her. 

“Oh,” she said, her voice shrunken. “I’m being annoying, aren’t I? I’m sorry.” She looked down at her half-empty plate, and Niles though she might burst into tears. Instead she stood up, neatly pushed in her chair, and excused herself. 

“What was that?” Niles asked when Kana had left the room. 

“I don’t know,” Corrin sighed. “I don’t think I was too harsh with her.”

“You weren’t harsh,” Niles assured him. But then why that reaction? Had they missed something? 

Niles found Kana in the wyvern keep, busying herself with scrubbing Trout’s scales. She didn’t acknowledge him at first, so he waited until Trout gleamed like decorative armor. Then she set her brush down and reluctantly turned to face him.

“Hey Dad,” she said.

“Hey. You alright, kiddo?” 

“I’m okay,” she said unconvincingly. “Is Papa mad at me?”

“Of course not,” Niles said. “He’s just tired. Nobody’s mad at you.” 

“Oh. Good.” She plopped down into the hay, leaning back against Trout. The wyvern, either out of consideration for the moment or plain contempt, was doing an incredible job pretending Niles didn’t exist. 

“You know I’m coming back, right?” Niles asked. Kana squirmed, which meant his guess had been correct. He sat down on the floor too, as close as he thought Trout would allow. “Kana. I promise I’ll come back.”

“I know,” she said shakily. 

“It won’t be like when you were in the deep realm. I’ll be back in a few days. You’ll hardly miss me.”

“I know. It’s okay. I’m okay. You don’t have to worry about me. I have Trout, after all. And Papa’s still here too.”

Kana swiped at her eyes, and Niles wished he knew the right thing to say. He was sure Corrin would know if he were here. But all he could do was make promises, promises he knew would sound empty to her. He hadn’t meant to make her miserable.

“I’m going to study real hard!” Kana said suddenly, her voice loud enough to cause Trout to grumble. “And I’m going to be the best wyvern rider in the whole army, even better than Auntie Camilla and Auntie Beruka! Just you watch, I’m going to make you and Papa so proud!”

She jumped to her feet and quickly saddled Trout, the wyvern thumping its tail in anticipation of flight. From her perch upon its back, Kana shot Niles a wide grin.

“Sorry to make you worry, Dad! I won’t be back too late!”

Before Niles could reply, she had ridden Trout out of the wyvern keep. Niles quietly brushed the hay from his clothes. Kana had grown up, but she was still a little girl after all. His little girl, he thought. Their little girl. 

Well, at least she wasn’t crying anymore.

 

Despite being a minor lord, Aldric’s domain was relatively vast. The quality of that land, however, was poor. It was mostly marsh, and while all sorts of plant and animal life thrived in it, humans were not among them. The roads were ill-kept, though perhaps they were in as good a condition as they could be. The going was slow, and Niles often feared that his horse would break its leg in the mud. It would be an awful waste of a horse. Perhaps Kana had been right about flying after all. 

After a day and a half of careful riding, the ground hardened, and he was able to ride at a faster clip. At times, the rare Nohrian sun even broke through the clouds, casting its foreign light upon the land. Still, it was difficult to imagine this domain bearing anything of worth.

Of course, Lord Aldric took a different view. The old man’s reception of Niles was tepid at first, but he changed his tune when Niles brandished Lord Leo’s seal. Then he had welcomed Niles into his dismal mansion with all its gaudy, dark finery, and set him up in his guest room, which smelled of dust and dead roses. He was curiously wealthy, and newly so, by the looks of it. He proudly showed off his collection of treasures, which sat uncomfortably in rooms much in need of new drapes. 

But more curious was the presence of his guard. They were a disorderly bunch, the sort of backwater ruffians Niles expected to find in a backwater domain. Too raggedy for a proper soldier, and too stupid to make a proper villain. That was not surprising—after all, even the royal family hired crooks. What was surprising was their number. They made Aldric’s overstuffed rooms even more claustrophobic, and they set Niles on edge. Having lived with thieves, he could recognize a den of them.

Aldric’s real jewel, the cornerstone of this wealth, were his fields. Like his treasures, he showed Niles their improbable plentitude. A wide swath of wheat, unusual in its dark brown color. It was, Aldric informed him, a special strain developed on his land that grew well in wet conditions. It even needed less light than normal wheat. This marsh wheat, as he called it, had made him rich when neighboring domains’ crops had failed. If cultivated en masse, it would catapult his tiny domain to glory and feed thousands. 

“And how much do you sell your wheat for?” Niles asked. Aldric’s face contorted into a weasel-like grin.

“That very much depends on the buyer,” he replied. “I have sold my marsh wheat for as much as fifteen gold a bushel. But for Prince Leo, I will sell for eight gold a bushel.”

“Awfully generous of you,” Niles said. Suspicious, he meant.

“It is not generosity, merely loyalty to the crown.” 

Extremely suspicious. 

“And what favors do you expect from the crown in return for your loyalty?”

“Why, nothing more than the protection that servants of the crown are due,” Aldric said. “You see, Sir Niles, a band of rebels are trying to sabotage my crop, and by extension the interests of Nohr. You saw for yourself how bountiful my fields were, and yet have of its grain remains unharvested, even this late in the season. It’s the fault of those rebels—they’ve intimidated my serfs from working. They’ve taken up in my forest and have assaulted many of my personal guard. And now I’ve heard talk that they plan to break into my own house and come for my life. It is horrible, no way for a man to live! I only ask that Prince Leo send a small force to exterminate this scourge so I may go to  sleep without wondering whether it will be my last.”

Niles listened to Aldric’s tale impassively. He had so wanted this to be a simple mission. Still, eight gold per bushel was not a price he could easily pass up.

“You understand, milord, that Nohr is currently at war with Hoshido? Lord Leo is unlikely to have soldier to spare to put down your uprising.”

“I am not so sure that this uprising and the war are unrelated,” Aldric said. But his innuendo was lost on Niles. He stared at the man, waiting on him to elaborate. “What I mean to say is, I wouldn’t be surprised if these rebels have outside elements among them. It is, after all, awfully convenient for the Hoshidans if Nohr’s few fields rot and her lords are gobbled up instead of wheat. Prince Leo’s first priority is the war, certainly. But it may be worth his while to stamp out these little fires before it’s too late.”

The idea was far-fetched. Adric’s land lay nowhere near the Hoshidan border, and if even the Nohrian siblings had not known about his wheat fields, how would the Hoshidans know? Despite what Aldric thought about himself, he was no big fish. There was little point for the Hoshidans to target him. But Niles couldn’t quite bring himself to dismiss Aldric’s idea altogether.

“I will relay your request to Prince Leo,” Niles said. “If he decides to aid you, we will send soldiers as soon as we can spare them.”

“Yes, of course,” Aldric said, clearly disappointed by his lukewarm response. “Though sooner would be better than later. As much as I would like to feed the Nohrian army, I will be quite unable to do so if the wheat goes unpicked.”

Despite its stuffiness, it was a mercy to return to his room. As much as Niles loved holding power over people, he hated playing the power games of lords. He found Aldric distasteful, and not even in a way he could respect. In the past, he had enjoyed making men like him cry. His type was quick to beg. Too bad his hands were tied by business. Well, no matter. The world was full of men like him. And after one more night under his roof, he would be headed home.

It was not the quiet night he had hoped for, however. Niles was awoken by a muffled thud from the next room. He thought at first that he had dreamt it, but intuition told him otherwise. Silently he rose from bed and shouldered his bow and quiver. He felt for the dagger tucked in his belt. He pressed an ear against the wall, and yes, someone was shuffling around in there. Someone light on their feet and trying to keep quiet. Perhaps there really was a scheme against Aldric’s life after all. And perhaps Aldric would lower the price of grain further if Niles thwarted it. 

He slipped into the hallway, positioning himself next to the adjacent room’s door, and unsheathed his dagger. The door opened, and as the would-be assassin stuck their head out, Niles grabbed them, putting his blade to their neck. 

“Blundering into a mansion like this,” Niles clucked derisively. “You’re a disgrace to your profession.”

“Let go of me, you...you bastard!” 

That voice made his blood run cold. Niles’s grip loosened, and his captive stumbled away, her own dagger glinting in the scant moonlight. Her silver braids, too.

“Nina?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied, it was Kana Time, not Nina Time.


	12. Chapter 12

She had thought it would go differently.

The plan had been solid. Jol’s group would go in first and cause a distraction at the front gate. Nothing too extreme, but provocative enough to draw out the guard and to keep them occupied for a few minutes. Meanwhile, Nina, Colette, and Marcus would sneak in through the back. After a few risky scouting missions, they’d discovered a couple of unoccupied bedrooms at the back of the mansion. They could probably slip through the windows of those rooms without being discovered.

The next part was tricky. Once they were in, they would find and take something of value to Aldric. Of course, they didn’t know what that “something” might be. None of their group had ever been inside Aldric’s mansion. All they knew was what they’d seen in hasty glances through darkened windows. But there would certainly be _something_ behind those walls, and once they found it, they would take it. Then Aldric would know what it was like to be on the other end of a theft. Instead of letting Aldric hide behind his guards, they would bring the fight to him. They would make him see that it was either their home or his.

“Are you scared, Colette?” Nina asked as they crouched in the bushes. Her own heart was hammering in her chest, but she wouldn’t admit that. Next to her, her friend laughed quietly.

“A little,” she confessed. “I’ve never stolen anything before.”

“It’s not so hard. Just think of it as already yours,” Nina said. “Whatever we take, Aldric doesn’t deserve anyway.”

“If only I could borrow a bit of your courage. My hands won’t stop shaking. See?”

Colette held her hand up, but the night was thick, and Nina could barely see their outline. So she took her hands in her own, and they were indeed trembling. They were rough hands, hardened in a way Nina’s weren’t. But Nina knew Colette’s hands. They were far kinder and cleaner than her own.

“Nina,” Colette said, her voice rising slightly above a whisper. “If something happens, I—”

A stick snapped behind them and the girls held their breath, Nina’s free hand going to the dagger at her hip. But it was only Marcus, his beautiful face pale with excitement and fear.

“Jol’s in,” he said. To Colette, not Nina. Nina let go of Colette’s hand, as if stung.

“Let’s move.”

They crept upon the mansion unseen, each of them stealing through a different window. It had been dark outside, but the room Nina entered was even darker. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, and still she bumped her knee against a trunk of some sort. She bit back a curse, and as she caught her balance, her hand came down on some smooth fabric. A dust sheet, she guessed. A cautious lord might keep his treasures covered up, but she doubted Aldric was the type. She fumbled for the door.

An arm snaked around her neck, and she gasped—thank the gods she didn’t scream. Moonlight from the hall’s high window showed the steel at her neck. A knife, Nina realized coldly.

“Blundering into a mansion like this,” a voice whispered. “You’re a disgrace to your profession.”

“Let go of me, you...you bastard!” Nina hissed. She struggled, and the arm gave way. She brandished her own knife, ready to drive it into her assailant’s chest.

The bastard man was staring at her, looking very lost and stupid.

“Nina?” he said, the dagger falling to his side. “What are you doing here?”

Panic gave way to anger. Her skin felt suddenly very hot, and she was brilliant in her rage, like a new being made completely of light.

“What are _you_ doing here?” she spat back. “Why are you siding with _him_?”

“You left your deep realm. Your Papa, Kana, and I have been so worried about you,” he said. Then the full meaning of her question seemed to sink in. “You’re one of the rebels. You’re here to kill Aldric.”

“Not quite,” Nina scoffed. “Though I’m sure he’d deserve it. No, I’m only here to liberate some of his riches. Which he certainly doesn’t deserve.”

“You’re stealing,” the bastard man said, his expression darkening. “The one thing I told you again and again never to do.”

For the briefest of moments, fear dampened Nina’s anger. She had never wanted him to look at her like that, but what use was his approval to her now? She didn’t need it, had sworn it off when she’d left the deep realm. How dare he expect anything from her now! He was the one who had betrayed her expectations first!

“I’m standing up for what’s right. We might be peasants, but our cause is noble,” Nina said, her grip on her dagger tightening. “Not that you’d understand that. Aldric’s the real crook here. _He’s_ the one stealing _their_ land! And if you’re working for him, you’re a worse thief than I thought.”

“Nina, that’s enough,” he said, his voice shadowed with desperation. “You’re coming home with me.”

She laughed. She didn’t care if the guards heard. She had finally hurt him, she thought, but it wasn’t enough. How could it be, after all the years he’d spent hurting her?

“I don’t have a home,” Nina said. “And if I did, it wouldn’t be with you. I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“Nina.”

“ _Niles_.”

“Nina?”

From behind her, Colette’s voice was quiet, almost polite. Nina turned and saw her standing wide-eyed, holding a silver candlestick. She turned back to the bastard man, and before he could say or do anything, she kicked him hard in the stomach. He reeled backward, and she bolted, grabbing Colette’s hand.

“Let’s go! We won’t have much time now!”

They flew up a flight of stairs, surprising a guard on the landing. Before he could draw his blade, Colette smacked him over the head with the candlestick.

“Sorry!” she yelped reflexively. Before either she or the guard could recover, Nina shoved him over the bannister. He cried out as he fell, and he hit the ground floor with a thud. Something next to him (under him?) shattered loudly.

“Shit,” Ninu muttered. She shouldn’t have done that. But Colette tugged at her arm, eyes wild with panic.

“C’mon!”

They kicked open a door, and yes, these things looked expensive enough. Gilded platters and jewelry with real jewels. A beautiful sword that looked like it would break if its blade touched human skin. Glossy vases that could have been of Hoshidan origin.

“They’re coming! Just grab and go!” Nina said.

She could hear shouts from downstairs. If the guards cornered them on the second floor, they’d be trapped. And if they jumped from this height, they risked breaking their legs in the fall. She grabbed a handful of the jewelry, accidentally elbowing a vase off its pedestal, which split like a melon on the wooden floor. Nina flinched, then knocked another vase over, this time on purpose. If she couldn’t take it with her, she could at least prevent Aldric from having it.

“Colette! Nina!” Marcus shouted from the doorway. “They’re onto us! Time to leave!”

They ran out into the hallway, just as two more guards were running up the stairs. A lance missed Marcus by a hair’s breadth. As he shoved the lancer down the stairs, the second guard slashed his sword across his chest. Colette shrieked as Marcus fell. Nina couldn’t think. She saw the guard raise his sword, and she dove over Marcus, waiting for the killing blow.

But the blow never came.

Nina heard the guard howl in pain, then the clatter of steel. She looked up and saw an arrow stuck through the guard’s hand. Then a hand around his neck, and he too was flung down the stairs. The bastard man pulled her up by the collar of her cloak, his expression fierce.

“Wanted to finish the job yourself?” Nina growled. “Fine. Do your worst.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he said. Then he glanced at Colette. “You. Apply pressure to his wound if you don’t want him to bleed out. Use your cloak.”

Stunned, Colette looked to Nina.

“I’m fine,” Nina insisted. “Save Marcus.”

“Listen,” the bastard man whispered, his grip still on her collar. “I can save your friends. I promise. But you’ll have to go along with what I say. And you’ll have to come home with me when all this is over.”

Nina could hear the guards’ commotion downstairs. She glanced at Marcus, unconscious in Colette’s arms, his shirt bloodied.

“And the land,” she said through gritted teeth.

“What?”

“The land! The common land! Aldric was going to take their land for his fields, but the village needs it to survive. Get that too.”

“Nina,” he said, shaking his head.

“You serve a prince, don’t you? If you can’t even do that, then what are you good for?”

The bastard man sighed. “Very well,” he said, holding his knife to her neck again.

“Sir Niles?” called a voice from downstairs. “What’s all this? What’s happened.”

“Lord Aldric,” the bastard man replied, the urgency smoothed out of it. “I’ve cornered a few would-be thieves. Come see for yourself. I assure you, it’s quite safe now.”

Aldric climbed the stairs, followed by a row of guards. So this was Aldric, the man who had kept the villagers under his thumb, Nina thought. He was nothing but a middle-aged man in sleep clothes. Still, Colette shrank from him. She bowed her head over Marcus’s wound, as if doing so could make her invisible.

“You’ll be able to sleep easier now, milord,” the bastard man said. “I assume these are the rebels you were talking about?”

“Yes, they must be,” Aldric said, a terrible smile on his face. “Thank you, Sir Niles. You’ve done quite well in catching them. Of course, such things must be expected from Prince Leo’s retainer.”

“Please milord,” one of the guards said. He was clutching his right hand, which still had an arrow stuck through it. “You cannot trust this man. He defended the rebels and attacked me. He could be on their side.”

“That can’t be true, can it, Sir Niles?”

“It’s true that I attacked him,” the bastard man said coolly. “But only because that fool was about to kill one of the rebels. I’m afraid he forced my hand.”

“I...I don’t understand,” Aldric stammered. “They’re rebels! Assassins! They ought to be put to death!”

“But Lord Aldric, it was you who suggested that these rebels may be Hoshidan sympathizers. Spies, even. If so, there is valuable information to be wrung out of them. It would be a waste if we allowed them to perish so easily. After all, their knowledge may be key to winning this war. As a retainer to the prince, it is my duty to take them into custody.”

“Custody?”

“Yes. I will be taking them back with me. After a little time together, I’m sure they’ll be eager to share all the intimate details about their plans. In fact, they’ve already started sharing. Now, what’s this I’ve heard about your domain’s common land?”

“That’s nothing! Nothing at all!” Aldric blustered. Nina thought he looked like an affronted rooster, all rumpled dignity and squawk. “I only plan to make room for my wheat fields. It’s my land, and I may do with it as I wish.”

“But it’s not _your_ land!” Nina cried. “It’s not even your wheat! It’s the villagers who grow the wheat, just like it’s the villagers who use and care for that land! If you take it from them, what will they have left?”

“How dare you talk to me like that, girl! Sir Niles, you must not trust a thing she says.”

“Trust is one thing, but listening is quite another, milord. But it’s true that you were planning to convert the common land, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes. As is my right.”

“Your right, of course,” the bastard man agreed emphatically. Nina grimaced at how easily the bastard man groveled. He didn’t have an honest bone in his body. “However, milord, it’s unfortunate that you choose to assert that right at such a fragile time for Nohr. The last thing we need is Nohrians turning on one another or doing anything that would inspire pro-Hoshidan sentiments. Think of the Hoshidan propaganda—‘Nohrian lord confiscates the commons.’ Why, it would be positively scandalous! It’s your land, and you may do with it as you wish. But we must all make sacrifices for the war, mustn’t we, milord?”

“I suppose we must,” Aldric repeated stupidly. “But my wheat fields—”

“Oh you don’t need to worry about your wheat or your fields,” the bastard man assured him. “Even if you don’t expand your fields, plenty of marsh wheat will be planted.”

“It will?”

“Yes. By the crown, of course. Purchasing this seed will be a great boon to the army. Perhaps Prince Leo will even see fit to spread your seed among other domains. If it is adaptable as you claim, I’m sure your wheat will thrive all across Nohr.”

Aldric turned pale as the prospect of his future wealth evaporated. “B-but Sir Niles, he begged. “It is my wheat, developed here on my own land.”

Nina scoffed. _His_ wheat, he said. Aldric had probably never lifted a hand during the harvest, and yet he was still trying to reap the benefits of it.

“But milord,” the bastard man said, feigning shock. “Certainly you see the value of your wheat to the war effort. It is in the best interest of Nohr to grow as much of it as possible. You wouldn’t go against Nohr’s interests, would you?”

“N-No, of course not!”

“Now milord, please don’t look so dispirited! I know you’re a man with ambitions for his domain. Vision like yours is a gift not to be wasted.”

“Oh?” said Aldric hopefully.

“Why yes.” The bastard man’s appeasing smile transformed into a sadistic grin. “Which is why I’m thinking of recommending you for military service. No better path to glory than through the battlefield, after all.”

If Aldric had been pale before, he was white as an onion now. He seemed to stagger, as if all the strength had gone out of his knees.

“The military. Well, I don’t know...I would not be suited for it, I think,” he mumbled.

“Of course you’re suited for it! You are a lord, after all. Were Prince Leo to summon you, it would be your duty to serve in his army. You’d simply have no choice! Now, if you would have your staff bring some rope for my prisoners, and some bandages for the bleeding one. And if you would have them saddle my horse with a cart.”

“You’re leaving? Now?” Aldric exclaimed, weak with surprise, hope, and dread.

“Yes. A few hours earlier than intended, but I must transfer these prisoners. It’s urgent business if they really are spies or Hoshidan sympathizers, as you suspect.”

It sounded like an outrageous bluff, even to Nina. But the bastard man had shocked Aldric into complete submission. She, Colette, and Marcus had their hands bound, and within ten minutes they were being loaded into a cart. They left Aldric’s mansion as they had not dared enter—through the front gates. Nina watched as the mansion receded, the glow of the guards’ torchers growing fainter and fainter. Still, no one said a word until the cart had drawn near the village. Then the bastard man guided the horse off the main road and into the trees. He dismounted and cut their bindings.

“Can you manage from here?” he asked Colette.

“Yes, I think so,” Colette said. “The village isn’t far. I’ll run and get someone to help us carry Marcus.”

“Not ‘us,’ just you,” the bastard man clarified. “Nina’s coming with me.”

“What?” Colette turned her bewildered gaze to her, and she shrunk from it. “Nina, what’s he talking about? You can’t leave with him!”

“Give us a moment,” Nina said to the bastard man. He raised an eyebrow, but he obliged her, retreating to watch the main road.

“Nina,” Colette said once the bastard man couldn’t hear them. “Who is that man? You talk like you know each other. He said he serves a prince!”

“He’s…” Nina said, struggling with how to best explain everything. “He’s my father.”

It was strange to use that word, and Nina did so begrudgingly. She wasn’t related to the bastard man by blood, and he had been absent for most of her life. He wasn’t like Papa, either—at least Papa had tried. But “father” was something Colette would understand, though even that was a stretch.

“Father?” Colette said. She looked wide-eyed at the bastard man’s back, as if searching for a resemblance or an explanation. “But he’s so…young.”

Nina shrugged. “I guess.”

“So,” Colette said after a moment. “You’re really going, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Nina said. “I’m sorry, but I have to.”

“I thought you would eventually. Nymphs never stay long, do they?” Colette said. She tried to smile, but it went wrong halfway. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t cry. I just don’t know what we’ll do without you.”

“You’re going to keep fighting.” Nina took Colette’s hands in hers. “Listen, what my…my father said in there was just talk. Maybe Aldric will be swayed by it. But once we’re gone, who knows what he’ll do. You and the others can’t back down. Not yet. You have to hold onto what’s yours.”

“We will. We’ll try. Oh!”

“What is it?”

“Your journal!” Colette cried. “You left it at the camp, didn’t you? You can’t leave without that!”

Her journal! Nina had forgotten about it. She felt a pang of regret for all the stories she had written down. But she doubted that the bastard man would wait for her to get it. No, even if she did get it, if he found out about her stories…

“You can keep the journal,” Nina said. “Since I won’t be around to tell them to you, you’ll have to read them yourself.”

“But all of your stories!” Colette protested.

“I can think up new stories,” Nina assured her. “Maybe even some with happy endings, how does that sound?”

Nina had hoped that would cheer Colette somewhat. But her sadness only deepened.

“I wish our story could have had a happy ending,” Colette said.

“It will! This isn’t the end. I’ll definitely come back to see you and everyone else!”

“Promise?”

“I—” The promise stuck fast in Nina’s throat like a lie. How could she say it when she knew for herself how easily such promises broke? She squeezed Colette’s hands, which were now coated in Marcus’s blood. “I promise.”

Marcus groaned next to them, and they looked at him expectantly. But he did not wake.

“Help me move him out of the cart,” Colette said. Together they lowered him down and lay him beneath a tree.

“He’ll make it, right?” Nina asked.

“I think so,” Colette said. “The wound wasn’t so deep.”

“He likes you, you know,” Nina said, surprising herself.

“I know,” Colette sighed. She knelt beside Marcus and put a hand to his forehead, checking for fever. The gesture was so tender that it put knots in Nina’s heart.

“Take care of him for me.”

Colette looked up at her, a flurry of emotions passing over her face. But she nodded, her eyes dark with resolve.

“I will,” she promised, her voice a small, hard thing. Then she stood and looked off into the depths of the forest. “I’d better run for help.”

“This is goodbye, then,” Nina said.

“Yes, it is.”

Colette hugged Nina, and Nina flinched. It had been a long time since someone had hugged her. It was nice, but a little scary. She was going to let go, Nina thought. Eventually, she had to. But Colette held onto her for a long time, long enough for Nina to put her arms around her too.

“What was it you were going to tell me before, outside Aldric’s mansion?” Nina asked when they had separated. But Colette shook her head.

“It’s not important. It doesn’t matter now,” she said. She smiled, this time full and real. “Goodbye, Nina.”

Nina watched as Colette disappeared into the trees, her heart growing heavy with the distance between them. When she was gone, Nina knelt next to Marcus. She put her hand on his forehead as Colette had done. His skin was warm and damp with sweat. He would not see her leave, and he would not know what she had been willing to give up for him. It was for the best, Nina decided.

The bastard man was waiting for her in the saddle.

“You didn’t run off,” he said.

“We had a deal,” Nina replied, climbing into the cart. “I won’t break my promises.”

He didn’t look at her, didn’t respond to the accusation implicit in her words.

“Sun’s coming up,” was all he said. Then he snapped the horse’s reigns, and the cart lurched forward. They started slowly, sourly, down the long road ahead of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How awkward would a long road trip with your estranged dad who you're almost as old as be? Probably very.


End file.
